The Phantom of Rhetoric: Radically Different Approaches that Create a Metacognitive Understanding

As showcased through our archive plans, Kamila’s and my project was heavily influenced by Foss and Griffins “Beyond Persuasion: A Proposal for an Invitational Rhetoric.” The reading of this article was so timely, and, to be honest, I’m not sure if we would have had the idea we had if it were not for the presidential election. Kamila and I both felt deeply affected by it, and I know in my own life, I’ve been struggling to have open conversations with people who have different political views than me. An approach to conversation, such as the Tumblr project we created, has been stirring in my mind for the past couple months, but I didn’t have the context or the foundation for it until reading Foss and Griffin.

What has most impacted me through the creation of this project, however, is this radically different approach to rhetoric. Up until this point, I conceptualized rhetoric as “persuasion” and the “conscious intent to change others” (Foss and Griffin 2). I have been drawing on traditional forms of rhetoric, which I see now as patriarchal since within it is “a desire for control and domination” since “the act of changing another establishes the power of the change agent over that other” (3). I agree with Foss and Griffin that this rhetoric does and should exist in degrees, especially when creating successful arguments; however, it was refreshing and liberating to conceptualize rhetoric in a different way.

Foss and Griffin argue for three fundamental principles of invitational rhetoric: equality, imminent value, and self-determination. They drew from bell hooks’ stance that “feminists seek to replace the ‘alienation, competition, and dehumanization’ that characterize relationships of domination with ‘intimacy, mutuality, and camaraderie’” (hooks quoted by Foss and Griffin 4). They had to ask themselves, then, how can this feminist ideology embark upon argumentative forms of rhetoric where change is not the purpose? Foss and Griffin state, “Because of the nonhierarchical, nonjudgmental, nonadversarial framework established for the interaction, an understanding of the participants themselves occurs, and understanding that engenders appreciation, value, and a sense of equality” (5).

I have to admit, at first I thought it was too idealistic (I even have that written in my marginal notes). However, when I applied it to my current real-life situation of people, mainly women, who I love and admire having radically different political viewpoints as me, I found myself needing a common ground where we can approach each other with respect, equality, and imminent value. I found myself needing a rhetoric that couldn’t (and wasn’t) being achieved through argumentation and persuasion. I needed a way to understand them, to develop an “understanding of the participants…that engenders appreciation” (5). So, to do this, Kamila and I created communicative options that exists in two rhetorical forms, which is outlined by Foss and Griffin as the following: “One is offering perspectives, a mode by which rhetors put forward for consideration their perspectives; the second is the creation of external conditions that allow others to present their perspectives in an atmosphere of respect and equality” (7). Kamila and I feel that we would be able to achieve these rhetorical forms through the dialectic Tumblr page.

Overall, we have many desires for this project. As outlined in our exploratory, we see this project continuing on beyond just the responses of the election. We want to engage in future political and social discourse with the purpose of developing understandings of different ideologies. Foss and Griffin not only complicated and expanded my understanding of rhetoric, the exploratory itself contextualized a new rhetorical method that extended my own understanding of feminism and the diverse goals of rhetoric in action. For my understanding, rhetoric is no longer a linear, static concept. I can now conceptualize it to have a range of goals and purposes, and by engaging with scholars whose direct approach was dramatically different than my foundational understanding of rhetoric, I have been able to see the spaces in between of what rhetoric can become and what rhetoric can accomplish.