It seems strange to me that most of my peers (myself included) learned about Helen Keller in elementary and/or middle school, but all that was taught to us about her was in regards to her disabilities. We learned that she was blind and deaf and bravely learned how to read and write. But that was it. Throughout those school years we were taught how much of a prominent figure Helen Keller was by being able to overcome her disabilities. But now I know there's so much more that she did. She wasn't this important figure solely because she learned to read and write. Helen Keller was a blind and deaf feminist and rhetorical theorists. Saying that now I realize that those aren't exactly terms that elementary/middle school kids are familiar with, so I kind of understand why we only learned the basics, but it's important for everyone to know just how intelligent she was and what she did for society.
Interestingly enough, it seems that Burke has found his rhetorical soulmate. As pointed out by George in "Mr. Burke, Meet Helen Keller," Keller, as more than just the miracle girl, "matches him [Burke] rhetorical move for rhetorical move" (George, 344). As a political activist and radical theorist, it shouldn't come as a surprise to hear that her discourse is strategically planned. Following the same method, both Burke and Keller would push for a leftist agenda by identifying with their audience and following these three strategies: boring from within, translation, and perspective by incongruity.
At first, when I said that Burke has found his rhetorical soulmate, I was going to say he found the female version of himself in terms of rhetoric, but nor after reading Butler's "Gender Trouble." It's clear to me that we can't ever reach equality until we stop using anatomical characteristics to identify someone. We're at the point where not even the obvious is so obvious. In other words, just because someone might have breasts doesn't mean they're female. With the emergence of transgender and merely just your choice of how you want to be, it's become more difficult to categorize. That goes the same for not only gender but for race as well. Once we stop using the words 'male,' 'female,' 'white,' 'black,' etc., then we can start to reach a degree of equality.
Hello!
ReplyDeleteI wholeheartedly agree with your writing. I feel like the achievements of disabled people are usually undermined by people willing to make inspirational stories out of them, and Helen Keller was an unfortunate victim of such. In my essay, I had talked about how disability was formed into a vehicle to advance other people's ideas, and how it was ignored when it was inconvenient. You can find George's thinking on this on page 345, when she lists various authors who discredit Keller because she doesn't "locate the boundaries between what was real to her and what she was forced to imagine" (345). According to this cold logic, trans women wouldn't count as women because they wouldn't have the experience as being women (which is silly and offensive). Truly once we start breaking down the "requirements" for experiences, we can advance as a society.
-Allyn