In reflecting on last class I realize you covered quite a lot of ground in terms of finding new ways of inquiring into the "Authorship and Influence" conversation.
For example, by examining the central role of the "Okyeame/communication person" in Molefi Asante's Afrocentric communication theory, you have enabled us to ask a different set of questions about Plato's "speech-writer" and Aristotle's "rhetor":
- What integrative processes could these characters have facilitated (if any) in Plato's and Aristotle's theories?
- What were their most critical debates about the nature of society?
- What are the possibilities for meta-commentary in The Phaedrus or On Rhetoric (i.e., is it possible that Plato's "speech-writer" and Aristotle's "rhetor" might play the role of meta-commentator in their respective texts)?
- What are the ways in which we might read The Phaedrus or Rhetoric as nationalistic projects?
By considering what concepts or ideologies become destabilized in Barthes's move from Author to scriptor, you have enabled us to consider what other concepts might influence the acts of discourse and communication in antiquity:
- Could "social consciousness" have played a role in rhetorical treatises of authorship, and if so, how?
- We tend to think of marginalization as something that is done to human agents, but what other kinds of marginalization might have occurred through their texts?
- How is "authorship" responsible for the material means through which ethnic cultures get systematically oppressed?
- While The Phaedrus and Rhetoric both associate writing with knowledge-making, one treatise functions as praxis and the other as a system. How can we suss out the differences between them?
This is what motivated me to ask my final question: How can a performance like Lupe Fiasco's "Bitch Bad" help you realize how your concept traces, Barthes, and Asante can more usefully speak to one another? What terms become whole processes? What definitions become richer and more complex? Thanks to Asante, we might rationalize that Lupe's video is a product of reader- or audience-centric discourse, and thanks to Barthes we might see in intricate detail how a "text" (the dissemination of cultural messages through hip-hop) becomes the principal agent in the discourse. Does this knowledge allow us to understand the dilemmas of The Phaedrus and the Rhetoric in any more depth? Can we see possibilities for early iterations of discourse theory in the Sophists? Can we see early instantiations of textual agency in Aristotle?
Here are the definitions and notes you compiled. As a reminder, feel free to finish your Aristotle trace in our shared grid, highlighting key moments in your trace. The more you can do to help us read at a glance, the better (i.e., boldfacing your trace questions or condensing your responses to a few sentences apiece). In its more condensed version, I think it will make a useful discussion tool for us next class, when we are discussing the Dissoi Logoi and On Rhetoric.
Finally, to enable our panhistorical approach to rhetorical theory and practice, on Thursday I'll introduce another study method that I think you will find useful for your ongoing exploration of the field: compiling your own chronology so as to have a more comprehensive sense of the various lenses or movements through which these texts have been studied: Western histories of antiquity and modernity; modern literary theory; critical theory; contemporary rhetorical theory; and rhetorical criticism.
Looking forward to next week,
-Dr. Graban
