Identity and Subjectivity
Three problems have marked the stages in the development of this move in contemporary
rhetorical theory. The beginning lay in George Herbert Mead's notions of the
role of the communication in the formation of the identity of the individual.
Mead theorized the individual integrated through what he called "gestures"
(that we would call "symbolic acts") reflected off significant others
to construct our notions of ourselves. Mead founded symbolic interactionism
and his followers began to map the strategies by which identity developed and
evolved.
Mead's notion of how the identity of individuals was formed involved an inherently
social context. So it was a small extension to seeing how groups of people were
integrated by common discourses and the symbolic actions that they performed
with those discourses. Social order could be seen as arrays of identifications
jockeying for position, gaining and losing strength, clashing with others, aligning
with still others, and defining the texture of social action in their activity.
Of particular interest was how new identities formed and became the grounds
of social action. McGee and then Charland theorized the ways in which rhetoric
birthed identity.
The introduction of new identities seeking power in the competitive environment
of societies of interlocking identities gave rise to the third stage of this
work: subjectivity. The question was how the process of identity formation empowered
individuals and positions to resist hegemonic discourses of control. This overt
insertion of the freedom/domination problem led to questions about the tensions
that compose social order: silence and voice, power and powerlessness, individual
and community. How can the rhetor empower his/her rhetoric? This became known
as the problem of agency or subjectivity.
Clusters: rhetoric and identity, constructing the subject, constructing
agency, constituting subjectivity, <the people>.
Questions to Stimulate Thought:
The following questions will help you orient to the problems of this
move:
- As we situate ourselves as scholars in the postmodern world, in what ways
must we negotiate identity (of the self and other)? What are the benefits
of our hyper-identity focused environment (to us as scholars)? How are we
limited by this sensitivity to identity?
- What is the "subject"?
- How does one go about defining her own subjectivity?
- How can we differentiate between subjectivity and agency? Can we?
- How do we understand the seminal work of McGee and Charland in relation
to each other? In relation to Black's notion of the "second persona"?
- What are the perils of identity politics?
- Does a commitment of equality replace identity politics?
- What "boundaries" are implicated in this move?
- How can we define "passing"? How does this concept relate to subjectivity?
Agency?
- How do we work toward dialogue and deliberation without compromising individual
voices?
- How can we define "voice" and what are the limitations on exercising
it?
- When should we and how can we ethically represent the other?
- How should representation of groups be achieved? Who should do this work
and who should not do this work? Who should the audience for such work be?
- Is the subject always the product of power relations?
- What role does "the body" play in the construction of the subject?
- How does memory help constitute the subject? (Individual vs. Community)
* = Reading for December 4
**= Reading for December 11
# = Reading for December 18
Basic Reading:
- Mead, George Herbert. "Self." Mind, Self, and Society.
Ed. Charles W. Morris. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1934. 135-44; 164-86.
- ** Foucault, Michel. "What is an Author?" Trans. Josué V. Harari. Foucault Reader. Ed. Paul Rabinow. New York: Pantheon, 1984.
101-20.
- * McGee, Michael C. "In Search of 'The People': A Rhetorical Alternative."
Quarterly Journal of Speech 61 (October 1975): 235-49.
- * Charland, Maurice. "Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple
Quebecois." Quarterly Journal of Speech 73 (May 1987): 133-50.
- * Raymie McKerrow. "Critical Rhetoric and the Possibility of the Subject." The Critical Turn: Rhetoric and Philosophy in Postmodern Discourse.
Eds. Ian Angus, and Lenore Langsdorf. Carbondale: Southern Illinois U. P.
1993. 51-67.
- * Stuart Hall. "Introduction: Who Needs
'Identity'?" Questions of Cultural Identity. Ed. Stuart Hall and
Paul Du Gay. London: Sage, 1996. 1-17.
Additional Reading:
- Black, Edwin. "The Second Persona." Quarterly Journal of Speech
56, no. 2 (April 1970): 109-119.
- Bruner, M. Lane. Strategies of Remembrance: The Rhetorical Dimensions
of National Identity Construction . Columbia : University of South Carolina
Press, 2002.
- Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs. "The Rhetoric of Radical Black Nationalism."
Central States Speech Journal 23 (1971): 151-160 .
- Conrad, Charles, and Elizabeth A. Macom. "Re-Visiting Kenneth Burke:
Dramatism/ Logology and the Problem of Agency." Southern Communication
Journal 61 (Fall 1995): 11-28.
- ** Dow, Bonnie J. "Politicizing Voice." Western Journal
of Communication (1997): 243-251.
- Eisenberg, Eric M. "Building a Mystery: Toward a New Theory of Communication
and Identity." Journal of Communication 51.3 (2001): 534-52.
- **Flores, Lisa. "Creating Discursive Space Through a Rhetoric of
Difference: Chicana Feminists Craft a Homeland." Quarterly Journal
of Speech 82 (1996): 142-156.
- Flores, Lisa A., and Mark Lawrence McPhail. "From Black and White to
Living Color: A Dialogic Exposition into the Social (Re)construction
of Race, Gender, and Crime." Critical Studies in Mass Communication
14 (March 1997): 106-22.
- Gergen, Kenneth J. "Narrative,
Moral Identity and Historical Consciousness: A Social Constructist Account.."
- Habermas, Jürgen. "An Alternative Way out of the Philosophy of
the Subject: Communicative versus Subject-Centered Reason." The Philosophical
Discourse of Modernity. Trans. Frederick Lawrence. 1985; Cambridge MA:
MIT Press, 1987. 294-326.
- Hay, Kellie D. and Mary M. Garrett. "Engaging Materialist, Poststructuralist
and Postcolonial Rhetorics." Quarterly Journal of Speech 87 (2001):
439-446.
- Nakayama, Thomas K. "Whiteness and Media." Critical Studies
in Media Communication 17 (2000): 364-381.
- Rogers, Richard A. "Overcoming the Objectification of Nature in Constitutive
Theories: Toward a Transhuman, Materialist Theory of Communication."
Western Journal of Communication (1998): 244-272.
- # Watts , Eric King. "'Voice' and 'Voicelessness' in Rhetorical Studies."
Quarterly Journal of Speech 87 (2001): 179-96.
- ** Yousman, Bill. "Who owns identity?: Malcolm X, representation,
and the struggle over meaning." Communication Quarterly 49 (2001):
1-18.
Recent Work: (Selected by Heather Adams and Tom Geary)
- Alcoff, Linda Martin, Michael Hames-Garcia, Satya P. Mohanty, and Paula
M.L. Moya, eds. Identity Politics Reconsidered. New York: Palgrave
MacMillan, 2006.
- Allen, Amy. "Power, Subjectivity, and Agency: Between Arendt and Foucault."
International Journal of Philosophical Studies 10, no. 2 (2003): 131-150.
- Anspach, Whitney, Kevin Coe, and Crispin Thurlow. "The Other Closet?:
Atheists, Homosexuals and the Lateral Appropriation of Discursive Capital."
Critical Discourse Studies 4 (2007): 95-119.
- Ashcraft, Karen Lee. "Organizing a Critical Communicology of Gender
and Work." International Journal of the Sociology of Language
166, no. 1 (2004): 19-43.
- Beasley, Vanessa B. You, the People. College Station: Texas A&M
University Press, 2004.
- Bennett, Jeffrey A. "Seriality and Multicultural Dissent in the Same-Sex
Marriage Debate." Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies
3 (June 2006): 141-161.
- Campbell, Alex. "The Search for Authenticity: An Exploration of an
Online Skinhead Newsgroup." New Media and Society 8 (April 2006):
269-294.
- Chan, Brenda. "Imagining the Homeland: The Internet and Diasporic
Discourse of Nationalism." Journal of Communication Inquiry 29
(2005): 336-368.
- # Cordova, Nathaniel. "The Constitutive Force of the Catecismo del
Pueblo in Puerto Rico's Popular Democratic Party Campaign of 1938-1940."
Quarterly Journal of Speech 90, no. 2 (May 2004): 212-233.
- Drzewiecka, Jolanta A. "Reinventing and Contesting Identities in Constitutive
Discourses: Between Diaspora and Its Others." Communication Quarterly
50 (2002): 1-24.
- Everett, Wendy. "Through the I of the Camera: Women and Autobiography
in Contemporary European Film." Studies in European Cinema 4,
no. 2 (July 2007): 125-136.
- Fassett, Deanna L. and John T. Warren. "The Strategic Rhetoric of
an 'At-Risk' Educational Identity: Interviewing Jane." Communication
and Critical/Cultural Studies 2, no. 3 (September 2005): 238-256.
- Flores, Lisa A. and Dreama G. Moon. "Rethinking Race, Revealing Dilemmas:
Imagining a New Racial Subject in Race Traitor." Western Journal of
Communication 66 (2002): 181-208.
- # Grindstaff, David Allen and Kevin Michael DeLuca. “The Corpus of Daniel
Pearl.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 21, no. 4 (December
2004): 305-324.
- Gunn, Joshua and Shaun Treat. “Zombie Trouble: A Propaedeutic on Ideological
Subjectification and the Unconscious.” Quarterly Journal of Speech,
91, no. 2 (May 2005): 144-174.
- Halberstam, Judith. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural
Lives. New
York: New York University Press, 2005.
- Hall, Maurice L. "The Postcolonial Caribbean as a Liminal Space: Authoring
Other Modes of
Contestation and Affirmation." Howard Journal of Communications
18, no. 1 (January 2007): 1-13.
- Hariman, Robert and John Louis Lucaites. No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
- Henderson, Gae Lyn. "The 'Parrhesiastic Game': Textual Self-Justification
in Spiritual Narratives of Early Modern Women." Rhetoric Society Quarterly
37, no. 4 (2007): 423-451.
- Heyse, Amy L. "Teachers of the Lost Cause: The United Daughters of
the Confederacy and the Rhetoric of their Catechisms." PhD diss., University
of Maryland, College Park, 2006.
- Holling, Michelle A. and Bernadette Marie Calafell. "Identities on
Stage and Staging Identities: ChicanoBrujo Performances as Emancipatory Practices."
Text and Performance Quarterly 27 (January 2007): 58-83.
- # Jovanovic, Spona. "Difficult Conversations as Moral Imperative: Negotiating
Ethnic Identities during War." Communication Quarterly 51, no.
1 (2003): 57-72.
- Kockelman, Paul. "Agent, Person, Subject, Self." Semiotica
162 (2006): 1-18.
- Lloyd, Moya. Beyond Identity Politics: Feminism, Power & Politics.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications Ltd., 2005.
- Mitra, Ananda. “Creating Immigrant Identities in Cybernetic Space: Examples
from a Non-Resident Indian Website.” Media, Culture & Society
27, no. 3 (May 2005): 371-390.
- # Morris III, Charles E. "Passing by Proxy: Collusive and Convulsive
Silence in the Trial of Leopold and Loeb." Quarterly Journal of Speech
91, no. 3 (August 2005): 264-290.
- **Moon, Dreama G. and Thomas K. Nakayama. "Strategic Social Identities
and Judgments: A Murder in Appalachia." Howard Journal of Communications
16 (2005): 87-107.
- Morus, Christina. "The SANU Memorandum: Intellectual Authority and
the Constitution of an Exclusive Serbian 'People.'" Communication
and Critical/Cultural Studies 4, no. 2 (June 2007): 142-165.
- Ott, Brian L. and Eric Aoki. “Popular Imagination and Identity Politics:
Reading the Future in Star Trek: Next Generation.” Western Journal of Communication
65, no. 4 (Fall 2001): 392-415.
- Owen, A. Susan. "Memory, War and American Identity: Saving Private
Ryan as Cinematic Jeremiad." Critical Studies in Media Communication
19 (2002): 249-282.
- Parry-Giles, Trevor and Shawn J. Parry-Giles. The Prime Time Presidency:
The West Wing and U.S. Nationalism. Urbana: Illinois University Press,
2006.
- Redman, Peter. “The Narrative Formation of Identity Revisited: Narrative
Construction, Agency and the Unconscious.” Narrative Inquiry 15, no.
1 (2005): 25-44.
- Rockler, Naomi R. "Friends, Judaism, and the Holiday Armadillo: Mapping
a Rhetoric of Postidentity Politics." Communication Theory 16
(November 2006): 453-473.
- Roy, Abhik. The Construction and Scapegoating of Muslims as “Other” in Hindu
Nationalist Rhetoric.” Southern Communication Journal 69, no. 4 (Summer
2004): 320+.
- Royster, Jacqueline Jones and Ann Marie Mann Simpkins, eds. Calling Cards:
Theory and Practice in the Study of Race, Gender, and Culture. Albany,
NY: SUNY Press, 2005.
- ** Shi, Yu. “Identity Construction of the Chinese Diaspora, Ethnic Media Use,
Community Formation, and the Possibility of Social Activism . Continuum:
Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 19, no. 1 (March 2005): 55-72.
- Shugart, Helene A. "Performing Ambiguity: The Passing of Ellen DeGeneres."
Text and Performance Quarterly 23, no. 1 (January 2003): 30-54.
- ___. "Reinventing Privilege: The New (Gay) Man in Contemporary Popular
Media." Critical Studies in Media Communication 20 (2003): 67-91.
- Stapleton, Karyn and John Wilson. "Gender, Nationality and Identity."
European Journal of Women's Studies. 11 (2004): 45-60.
- Stern, Maria. Naming Security - Constructing Identity: 'Mayan-women'
in Guatemala on the Eve of Peace. Manchester, England: Manchester University
Press, 2005.
- Stillion Southard, Belinda A. "Militancy, Power, & Identity: The
Silent Sentinels as Women Fighting for Political Voice." Rhetoric
& Public Affairs 10, no. 3 (2007): in press.
- Sweet, Derek B. “More than Goth: the Rhetorical Reclamation of the Subcultural
Self.” Popular Communication 3, no. 4 (2005): 239+.
- Tate, Helen. “The Ideological Effects of a Failed Constitutive Rhetoric:
the Co-option of the Rhetoric of White Lesbian Feminism.” Women's Studies
in Communication 28, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 1-31.
- Vargas, Lucila. "Media Practices and Gendered Identity Among Transnational
Latina Teens." Paper prepared for the annual meeting of the International
Communication Association. New York, NY, 2007.
- Vitsaropoulos, George. "Constitutive Rhetoric and Subjects of Globality:
The World Summit on the Information Society." Paper prepared for the
annual meeting of the International Communication Association. New York, NY,
2005.
- Watts, Eric King. "Border Patrolling and 'Passing' in Eminem's 8 Mile."
Critical Studies in Media Communication 22, no. 3 (August 2005): 187-206.
- Witteborn, Saskia. "The Expression of Palestinian Identity in Narratives
About Personal Experiences: Implications for the Study of Narrative, Identity,
and Social Interaction." Research on Language and Social Interaction
40, no. 2 (April 2007): 145-170.
- ___. “Of Being an Arab Woman Before and After September 11: the Enactment
of Communal Identities in Talk.” Howard Journal of Communications
15, no. 2 (April – June 2004): 83-98.
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