African American Rhetoric(s): Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Preface

Preface Elaine B. Richardson Ronald L. Jackson II AFRICAN AMERICAN RHETORIC(S) IS AN INTRODUCTION TO fundamental concepts as well as a systematic integration of historical and contemporary lines of inquiry in the study of African American rhetoric(s). African American rhetoric(s) is the name we prefer for the study of culturally and discursively developed knowledge-forms, communicative practices and persuasive strategies rooted in freedom struggles by people of African ancestry in America. Each chapter in the collection raises issues concerning the practicality of Black rhetoric(s) in order to explore them more deeply; to consider how they influence our work in the study of cultural rhetorics; and to think about how these rhetorics might be suited to better accommodate the development of empowering rhetorics, ideologies , and rhetorical strategies. This text has strong theoretically oriented pieces that push thinking in the discipline in new directions or that revisit, recontextualize, and revise more traditional lines of inquiry. Another focus of this collection is on oral/written intertextuality, so that the analysis of orations by African Americans is not the focus; rather, African American discourse, written or spoken, is viewed as always already polyphonous. The collection also has a strong pedagogical and practical bent, as well as empirically oriented pieces that examine theories and social literacies in practice. This text treats literary, cultural, discursive, and linguistic aspects of African American rhetorics such as womanist, Reconstructionist, Ancient Egyptian, and Afrocentric rhetorics as indivorceable components of a larger study of the universe of Black discourse. From this perspective , African Americans and other diasporic Africans have developed communicative behaviors, ideas, and persuasive techniques to advance and protect themselves while counteracting injustice. In these essays, we seek a broader conceptionalization of African American rhetoric(s) by exploring the roots of African American cultural xiii understandings and practices found in diverse places as literary texts, barbershops , historical documents, and cultural practices, to name a few, and the articulation of these in their connection to current persuasive and negotiation strategies. Another unique focus of these essays is their persistent effort to delineate debates within the fields of rhetoric and composition, (African) American literature and criticism, and African American studies in general. Furthermore, the connection of linguistic and cultural variation to rhetoric is emphasized. The essays contained here are an attempt to explore the development, meaning, themes, strategies , and arguments of African American rhetoric(s), as well as the connections of these to culture, rhetoric, poetics, composition, and literacy and among the same. In this text, we use the terms Black, African American, Afro-American, and people of African descent synonymously. We realize that there are semantic differences between the terms. For example, for some people, Black implies a political edge that the term African American or Afro-American does not. Conversely, for some people, African American and Afro-American signal a neutral designation in a way that Black does not. For others, Black and Afro-American refer to people of African descent located throughout the Diaspora, including the Americas, the Caribbean, the African continent, and throughout Europe. However, for this volume, we impose no uniformity of usage upon the authors. We trust the reader won’t find this too much of a hindrance. Keith Gilyard’s introduction maps the historical terrain of the field, identifying some of the earliest dissertations written on the rhetoric of Frederick Douglass through studies of Black Power rhetoric to the rhetoric of the jeremiad (the fall of America), up through contemporary, as his title reflects, Aspects of African American Rhetoric as a Field. Part one, “Historicizing and Analyzing African American Rhetoric(s),” contains five essays concerning aspects of the history of Black Power rhetoric, new ways of theorizing African American rhetoric(s), theories pertaining to appeals and rhetorical strategies employed by historical and contemporary African American rhetors, rhetorical analysis of literature, as well as analysis of the work of two pioneering African American female linguistic anthropologists. The chapter by Shirley Wilson Logan, “Black Speakers, White Representations : Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and the Construction of a Public Persona,” explores African American rhetors’ creation of ethical appeals. Logan’s analysis of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s construction of a public persona attributes much of Harper’s training to her xiv Elaine B. Richardson and Ronald L. Jackson II womanist consciousness, composed of a vernacular sensibility informed by life experiences and cultural orientation as well as formal elocutionary training. In fact, Harper grew...