Walking Amongst the Pre-Raphaelites

A Recounting/Response to one of the papers in Rhetoric and Ethnicity and a (brief) bibliography with annotation to Royster’s essay in Cross-Talk for your enjoyment:

Gale, Xin Liu . “Community, Personal Experience, and Rhetoric of Commitment.” Rhetoric and Ethnicity. Eds. Keith Gilyard and Vorris Nunley. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, 2004. 103-110.

Xin Liu Gale expresses her hesitance in accepting ideas of community and “-isms”…

(Game playing time! Fill in the blanks:

femin__, multicultural__, Marx__, social construction__, political activ__; Or discourse _____, interpretive _____, home _____, school _____, classroom _____).

…since she emigrated to America’s composition and rhetoric field via China: “At the beginning, the ubiquity of ‘isms’ and ‘community’ was indeed a culture shock” and, thought she quickly adapted to fit in, “the puzzlement was not resolved as to why a country founded on individual expression and freedom for its people to pursue personal happiness and fulfillment appears to be so devoted to social ‘isms’ and community” (103).

Her Chinese upbringing bred misgivings of such concepts, just as the invitation to speak on rhetoric and ethnicity bred misgivings about who she was, what she had to say. Gale queries herself: “What community do I belong to? What ethnic community do I belong to?” (104). She had left China behind in her life as well as her scholarship; She lamented the loss of any roots in her quest to be “American.”

These ruminations, however, resulted in revelation: “…a clean break with politics, communities, and the past is not only necessary but inevitable for the [Chinese] writer” (106). Why? A community wherein “human attachments… made most of us cowards and confined us to a silent existence that in turn forced silence on others” inspired a particular need for “unlimited and unbridled independence” (106-107). In China, “everything is interpreted in terms of political intentions, class struggle, and social good, [and] the most innocent story could be construed as a vicious attack on something” (108). Writers occupy a troubled position in a country that “neither loves its intellectuals nor wants their thinking, if their thinking is independent and different from the ideology of the party and the ‘Chinese community’” (108).

Xin Liu Gale concludes her piece by wishing for a time when everyone, everywhere, can “have the freedom to write and be encouraged to write about their personal experience of encountering and living with others” because “only through writing can the tragedy, the comedy, and the beauty of encountering others be captured and become a source of transformation for self and for the culture at large” (110).

Some thoughts…

-I should note that my play with the color red reflects my association of it with the Chinese belief that it represents luck; it is not a commentary on the connections between the color and communism – I leave such things to others.

-I wondered if Xin Liu Gale noted the irony in her ruminations “What community do I belong to? What ethnic community do I belong to?”, so common for m/any “true Americans” (much like the students Linda Cullum writes of in “Lessons from the Turtle Grandparents,” who self-describe as “just a bunch of average White kids.” A reminder, perhaps, that at times “White” can mean the absence of color, the leeching away of connections and cultural understanding that necessitates a rebuilding, the connections that a composition teacher like Cullum or Gale can facilitate in their classrooms [143]).

-The dangers of community and -ism belief: Gale prompts the reader to recall why communal notions can be harmful or dangerous, why we must embark in supporting/sustaining them with great care and knowledge.

-I was likewise interested in Gale’s encouragement at the close of her piece for students to “write about their personal experience of encountering and living with others,” since we see once again a weighting of the personal in writing (110, emphasis mine). The connection makes sense in terms of Gale’s support for individuality to foster writing, based on the lessons China taught her about the needs of writers for total freedom, something Americans often take for granted. After all, it is easy to support “-isms” and “communities” when they are a choice to indulge in rather than a requirement to bind the voices of a people.

Royster, Jacqueline Jones. “When The First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own.” College Composition and Communication 47.1 (February 1996): 29 – 40. Rpt. in Cross–Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader. Ed. Victor Villanueva, Jr. 2^nd ed. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2003. 611 – 622.

Jacqueline Jones Royster stresses the importance of subjectivity using personal experiences as a guide. She discusses the ways in which race is treated carelessly among discourse communities in our nation. Her purpose is to remind people to be aware of subject position and to treat others as they would wish to be treated in order to avoid violation. The ultimate emphasis is on the need for training in order to respect the point of view of others, singularly or in cultural groups, and the ability to engage others as hybrids. In one sense we must remember that people are hybrids – composed of many parts, all “authentic”, and in another, that all great learning, etc., comes from the hybridization of cross-boundary discourse. To effectively exchange perspectives, however, we must collectively be taught to listen.

“Theme-ing:”

Personal experiences…

Training…

People as hybrids (the complication of subject position/s)