Turning a Critical Eye to Watts

I try to approach texts with an open mind which often means I accept what I read with few qualms. However, this was not the case for James Watts' "Story-List-Sanction." I felt the piece was difficult to access, and found myself resisting his arguments because of this.

Overall, I feel like Watts makes some wide generalizations which oversimplify his subject. First look at his word choice. He makes claims like, "Two purposes clearly motivated the writing of Kurigalzu's inscription" (199), or "The inscription's rhetoric is clearly directed at future kings and their officials" (199). For one, if he is stating his argument is obvious, or clear, then why does he need to spend 14 pages explaining it? I think these kinds of statements distance the reader from the writer, setting a kind of hierarchy where the author is full of knowledge and the reader is there to absorb it.

I also found difficulty moving into Watts' argument itself, which is where his over-generalizations become more evident. He makes bold claims concerning the intent of authors and the aims of texts, for example on page 204 when he says, "the lists aim to dictate present behavior," or "memorializing the founding king or deity is a major rhetorical goal motivating all of these texts." These kinds of claims are bold, as we are not actually able to know the intent of an author inaccessible to us; we can only speak about how the texts function and the kinds of effects they might have had, not the effects they actually had. Like William Hallo said in "The Birth of Rhetoric," problems with studying these ancient texts include assessing the impact on a presumed audience, as this kind of data is not typically available (25).

There are moments where Watts seems to nod toward the complexity of the issue. An example of this occurs on page 206 when he says “[the story-list-sanction] strategy is not typical of any particular textual genre in any of these cultures, but seems rather to have been adopted ad hoc to enhance the persuasiveness of particular texts.” In this instance, Watts does not make an assuming description of the texts, but rather suggests what might be the case: it seems as though the strategy is used ad hoc. More language like this would have bettered his argument as it would have appreciated the nature of the subject more fully.

Despite my resistance to Watts piece, I was able to glean yet another view about rhetorical strategies in ancient texts, however I feel his argument canvases all ancient texts. This generalization, I feel, cannot be accurate, as we are considering a huge span of time as well as numerous geographically separated cultures (another problem, he doesn’t orient us to his specific culture or time of study, it is only “ancient Near Eastern rhetoric,” p 197).