The Readings: Some Things I Considered; Mostly Just a Rant

I'm usually not a fan of reading book reviews, but I found that the one we started with prior to reading Stromberg's introduction was rather compelling. However, that being said I was compelled to discuss manifest destiny in relation to Peter d'Errico's claim that Bizarro brings up in her review. Unfortunately this argument that "the United States' claims on indigenous nations' land is based upon a doctrine of Christian supremacy" is not really palpable to the introduction and thus I am forced to only mention it in passing. That's what reviews do, they make me think of other things I want to discuss that have no relation to what I should actually be discussing. So there it is, I mentioned it at least, which I could not help but do; now, let's move on to what actually struck me with the relevant text.

There is some mention of the intro in Bizzaro's review. What I'm particularly interested in is her direct correlation to the simplicity of the intro and the supposed audience of this text: "While some scholars might find the "Introduction" too simplistic, I believe this emerging area of study needs to be placed in its proper context and connected to traditions familiar to novice readers. A thorough theoretical grounding is necessary for its audience-mostly an audience external to indigenous cultures" (Bizarro 424).

So the question then is whether or not the intro fulfills these goals; in other words, I approached the intro with that in mind: will I gain a "theoretical grounding" from the intro since I am the "audience external to indigenous cultures" (Bizarro 424).

Here's what I came up with:

-- Ernest Stromberg's use of defining terms at the outset is a nice way to become grounded in the intent of his discourse. I particularly enjoy his contrast between "survival" and "survivance". "While 'survival' conjures images of a stark minimalist clinging at the edge of existence, 'survivance' goes beyond mere survival to acknowledge the dynamic and creative nature of Indigenous rhetoric" (Stromberg 1).

-- I enjoy his question "Are there multiple rhetorics" because it is a question that his audience might consider (it's a question I consider), and I feel it is going to be answered (Stromberg 1). Furthermore, this question directly relates to how employing the use of western rhetorics in an attempt to understand the "other" rhetorics can be problematic. There is mention of this in a long sentence -- that I don't want to quote -- in the first sentence of the top paragraph of page 2, so just go there if you're interested.

-- Here I'm going to link to authenticity because I am forever intrigued by authentic nature. Here's what Walter Benjamin had to say about authenticity: "The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced” (Benjamin 4). Sounds like rhetorical sovereignty kind of right? Certainly survivance.

-- Love this from Burke: "if men were not apart from one another, there would be no need for the rhetorician to proclaim their unity" (A Rhetoric of Motives 22). That's all.

-- The parlor metaphor is grand, especially with the mention that the individual entering the parlor takes it for granted that they were invited to the parlor, to join the conversation and "put in [their] oar", they are not the "other" (The Philosophy of Literary Form 10-11). 

-- From that point forward Stromberg seems to go through the ways that American Indian rhetoric has been misused, causing it to be irrelevant. He moves forward saying: "American Indians continue to exist, and they continue to develop and apply sophisticated rhetorical practices" (Stromberg 8). 

In finality, my question was answered at the end of Stromberg's introduction. I felt I received some basic information about North American Indigenous peoples' form of rhetoric. Furthermore, I was also presented with some interesting ideas of my own. How can I relate aspects of life that I attempt to adhere to, with the inevitability of differing cultures?

I'll end with a quote by Lafcadio Hearn: "A man who has no ghostly feeling can not make anything alive, not even a page of history or a page of oratory. To touch men’s souls, you must know all that those souls can be made to feel by words; and to know that, you must yourself have a ‘ghost’ in you that can be touched in the same way" (Hearn 50).
 
This is persuasion to me, there is no other form as beautiful, but there are certainly other means of persuasion available.