Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness (review)

Krista Ratcliffe begins her book by stating her simple purpose: “This book argues that listening should be revived within rhetoric and composition studies via a concept of rhetorical listening” (1). However, the book’s theoretical explication and compelling case studies are a wonderfully complex addition to rhetorical studies. Ratcliffe begins the book with an honest account of her previous inability to confront whiteness in her scholarship and teaching. She contends that nothing in her education had prepared her to recognize or articulate whiteness. Thus she had no strategies for resisting certain versions of whiteness that may privilege some and oppress others. To attend to this dilemma, she revisits work by influential feminist, philosophical, and rhetorical scholars. She contends that rhetorical listening may be employed to hear people’s intersecting identifications with gender and race to facilitate cross-cultural communication on any topic.

Hers is a lofty project but also one, as she correctly argues, that contributes to rhetorical literature, which has long overlooked listening in favor of theoretical approaches to the written and spoken word (19). Indeed, the book convincingly argues that rhetorical listening would affect the lives of citizens, scholars, and teachers if only we took it more seriously. As a theoretically strong and pedagogically useful work, this book is an asset for scholars and teachers concerned with the interplay of gender, whiteness, and agency.

According to Ratcliffe, rhetorical listening is needed in cross-cultural communication. A rhetorical listener leaves herself open to understanding the complex political and ethical position of a rhetor. Although rhetorical listening does not guarantee agreement, it does provide an opportunity for “hearing what we cannot see” (29). The book is organized around the four moves that comprise rhetorical listening: promoting an understanding of self and other, proceeding within an accountability logic, locating identifications across commonalities and differences, and analyzing claims as well as the cultural logics within which these cultural logics function (26).

She begins her first chapter with a defense of the ear; here she is careful to articulate that she is not advocating for a new type of “reading.” Rather, listening to texts and arguments with a sense of openness dramatically changes the way one approaches discourse. Instead of reading for concepts with which we may agree or disagree, rhetorical listening compels us to contemplate arguments based on the relation to culture and to engage the possibilities of bringing differences together (25). In chapter 2, Ratcliffe ties rhetorical listening to a variety of other theories. Although she draws heavily on Kenneth Burke’s concept of identification and Diana Fuss’s postmodern notion of identification and disidentification, she illuminates interesting ideas from a wide range of theorists spanning from Aristotle to Judith Butler.

Chapter 3 offers the first of her case studies, each designed to showcase a “real world” function of rhetorical listening. In this particular chapter, Ratcliffe examines the public debate between Audrey Lourde and Mary Daly. Ratcliffe uses the exchanges as an example of a powerful cultural desire to avoid talking cross-culturally about race and gender. As such, Ratcliffe illuminates the powerful implications of rhetorical listening in public debates. As Ratcliffe argues, rhetorical listening moves us from dysfunctional silence to a functional rhetoric that allows us to communicate about our similarities and differences. In this chapter, she introduces a new and interesting tactic: listening metonymically. By employing a humorous exchange from her own life, Ratcliffe introduces eavesdropping as one tactic of rhetorical listening in chapter 4. To understand how whites speak about whiteness and privilege, Ratcliffe argues that eavesdropping is a rhetorical tactic of purposely positioning oneself on the edge of one’s knowing in an effort to overhear and learn from others (105). Her last chapter marks an explicit move to a pedagogical approach to listening. Ratcliffe is committed to listening to her students and learning from their attitudes toward gender and race. In the process, she states that listening pedagogically helps both students and teachers become more open to differences and more flexible...