The beginning of Mr. Burke, Meet Helen Keller gives us a good point. The extent of my knowledge of Helen Keller is the idea instilled upon me primarily from the pop culture - she was an inspiring blind (and deaf?) woman.
It was a completely different perspective to suddenly see Helen Keller
from a rhetorical standpoint and what she did as a radical feminist. I
suppose the blind aspect is more compelling than the woman aspect of her
story.
This makes the comparison of Burke and Keller all the more compelling.
They both lived around the same time and affected change in rhetorical
theorizing. It's more obvious with Burke though. He's primarily seen as a
rhetorical theorist. I've read him multiple times before in classes
like Writing/Editing/Print Online and Rhetoric. Helen Keller is
different.
I haven't read any works by her or about her in any
of these classes up to this point. They bring up in the article once
that Keller once said: "philanthropy, especially from the wealthiest
individuals, falsely assures others that those with money are generous
and that those in need are being taken care of - by someone else. It
covers the facts of economic inequality so that they cannot be seen."
It's a look into the rhetorics of philanthropy.
Why haven't I heard this
before? Is it because culture put a deeper importance on the things she
did as a blind woman? Or is it because the rich wanted to play such
things down? After all, giving money to those in need is giving money to
those in need. It's a new thing to me to see that Helen Keller wasn't
only a cornerstone of her time, but also ours.
It's interesting because even in the George text he continues to repeat that Keller isn't a confirmed rhetor despite the fact that she was writing rhetorical theory, and fighting against what people were saying about her experiences.
ReplyDeleteTo me it seems that the work Keller was doing and her how she was defending it could be viewed as an example or a case of Burke's Theories.