The Illusion of Othering

            This introduction does an incredible job of making a case for the way in which Western rhetoricians have created “the rhetoric of othering.” (3) Right away within this essay I had a realization of how small my thinking has been when considering the other. What this introduction did was to allow exploration into the idea that the concept of “others” is an illusion. As a student of the Western world I have been conditioned to view minorities as the “other” without witnessing the role the “other” plays in my education. But what this essay seems to invoke is the idea that the “other” is in place simply because my education has put it in place. What proves impossible through rhetoric, though, is the ability to step away from the concept of the “other”. Never will a student of Western rhetoric be able to view Native American rhetoric as anything but “other” rhetoric. This is an incredibly crucial perspective for rhetoricians to realize when studying rhetoric of “others”, that the point of view they are coming from will always be that of a Western practice, we will never see Native American rhetoric without the lens from which we have been raised with. 

            There are so many obstacles that a Native rhetorician must push through in order to be considered equal with a Western (European) rhetorician. “For many Native rhetoricians, the task has been to revise, replace, or tear down these screens.” (5) Instead of understanding their own rhetorical past, Natives must use Western rhetorical traditions if they hope “to establish their equal humanity with Europeans.” (5) The real work of Native rhetoricians seems to have a shadow cast over it due to the fact that each Native writer is “addressing an audience that generally assumes its own superiority.”(5) Yet this may be one of Native American’s most helpful rhetorical moves. By acknowledging the existence of the “other” identity they hold within the Western world, Native rhetoricians can better understand the ways in which to communicate and persuade and even manipulate in order to create and uphold a rhetoric of survivance.