Talk About Talk: Promises, Risks, and a Proposition Out of Nommo

In the essay that centers these responses, author George Yancy celebrates and explores three facets of Geneva Smitherman's (Docta G's) approach to African American Language (AAL). The first feature is a representation of the Middle Passage as the violent beginning of Africans' encounter with the Americas, and the onset of "psycho-linguistic rupture" among black people in the United States (Yancy 2004, 290). The second facet introduces the concept of Nommo, its generative power, and its role in constituting an oppositional African American identity and language, and the third aspect explores AAL's structure and manifestation of "linguistic resistance" to "Euro/Anglo" hegemonic terms of power (Yancy 2004, 288). While the three aspects of Docta G's theory of AAL are related, and each is important to understanding the linguistic theory of AAL discussed by Yancy, the focus of my response will be on Nommo. From the perspective of a rhetorical philosophical approach to linguistic theory, which forms the framework of my response, I find this facet most provocative.

The argument of the present response unfolds in three stages. It begins with a brief definition of rhetorical philosophy followed by reconstruction of Yancy's and others' conception of Nommo as creative power. Next, the essay makes an argument about the promises and risks of conceptualizing Nommo and, subsequently, AAL in terms of creativity alone. Both the promises and risks have significance for black people, and for the wider American community as well. I end with the response's speculative claim about the potential to account for Nommo and AAL from within a theory of public speech premised upon the importance of holding creative power and communicative reason accountable to one another.

Creativity Returns to the Word

In all too brief a summary, we can say that the idea, art, and practice of rhetorical philosophy begins with the presupposition that human thought and action are enabled by, and entwined within, speech. In Aristotle's Rhetoric, in which judgment is declared the end of invention, this presupposition takes shape in the name "logos," which represents speech and reason (Aristotle 1984, 1355b26). Put another way, rhetoric is the counterpart of logical discussion. The significance of this dialectical claim was unpacked by Adorno (1997, 55-56). To him, on one side, the concepts of philosophy depend upon rhetoric for their expression and ability to be thought and rendered practical. On the other side of the dialectic, the expressions of language depend upon the cognitions of philosophy to issue warrants for their reason. In short, alert to contingency, rhetorical philosophy names the constellation of creativity, intersubjective reason, and human action, along with the ethos that presupposes, performs, and invites interaction with it (Doxtader 2000).

From the perspective of rhetorical philosophy, the concept of Nommo is a prominent feature in Yancy's account of AAL, "the language of Black America" (Yancy 2004, 288). According to Yancy, Nommo is the creative "power of the word" that names life in common as its end and beginning (Yancy 2004, 290). A mode of symbolic action, Nommo is a means to define the black self and her lived experience of the world. It is a creative word-magic that has "'power ... to actualize life and give mastery over things.'" On this account, the concept of Nommo represents the instrumental power of speech to constitute African American selfhood and black experience. To Yancy, these definitions are inspirational collected goods. The word has the power "to move Black folk toward a greater sense of community" "fundamental to the traditional African world view" (Yancy 2004, 293, 296).

Importantly, Yancy and Docta G are not alone in conceptualizing Nommo as an instrumental power to define in the name of black community. Concerned to name an "African concept of communication rooted in traditional African philosophies" (Asante 1998, 100, 96), Molefi Asante has defined Nommo as "the generating and sustaining powers of the creative word." To Asante, Nommo is "a collective activity" or "experience" that provokes a shared "happening" and is "directed towards maintaining community harmony" (78, 90, 79). Janet Hamlet (1998, 91), Adetokunbo Knowles-Borishade (1991, 495...