Campbell’s essay, “Agency: Promiscuous and Protean,” she not
only outlines her five characteristics of an agent, but also touches upon the
effects these agents have on society. Agency is presented as a social
construct. One purposefully set in place and perpetuated by society’s
practices, which further stereotypes and grouping. She discusses the agency of
Sojourner Truth’s speech, more so the agency of the written renditions of her
speech. In this sense the agency of Truth is only conveyed through the biased
perspective of others. This is similar to the way handicapped individuals are
presented in Barton’s essay due to the fact that the audience has no actual
interaction with the agent. There is now an opportunity for the idea of handicapped
individuals to be created by rhetors, through agency.
Barton discusses the idea of a “supercrip,” a handicapped
person who is shown completing extraordinary feats, usually in an advertisement.
These are the people that lose their legs and still manage to run marathons. I
give these individuals all the praise in the world but Barton believes that
depicting them in advertising only reinstates their role as inferior or
abnormal. By not illustrating them in a natural life, the audience creates a
divide between themselves and the Other. Sojourner Truth is like a supercrip in
the way she is rhetorically created. There where no other women like Sojourner
Truth at that time, she is an almost an impossible role model. The main
difference between these two examples is that the rhetoric created behind Truth
was positive for herself, women, and minorities. However, the rhetoric employed
by the United Way produced a negative view of the handicapped. Regardless of if
these views are true or not, the audience believed them to be.
“Agency is the power to do evil” (Campbell 13). In the case
of the United Way, agency was the power to do evil. Advertising campaigns
focused only on children creating the sense that handicapped people are
“perpetual children” (Barton 198). This ides was never challenged because the
campaigns where presented in the workplace, a setting usually absent of the
handicapped. With no real world examples to see, the audience internalized the campaigns
as truths. This is the case with Sojourner Truth as well. The entire country
had never seen a woman so strong, especially not a black woman. Thus, the
positive rhetorical campaign surrounding her took hold in the American public. Advertisers and rhetors take advantage
of what their audiences do not know in order to persuade them more easily. As
students of rhetoric we must take note of this in everyday life and not let the
ideas of others be substituted for our own ignorance.
Barton, Ellen L. “Textual
Practices of Erasure: Representations of Disability and the
Founding
of the United Way.” Embodied Rhetorics: Disability in Language and Culture.
Ed. James
C. Wilson and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
UP, 2001.
169-199.
Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs. “Agency:
Promiscuous and Protean.” Communication and
Critical/Cultural
Studies 2.1
(2005): 1-19.
Peter,
ReplyDeleteI think you've keyed in on a crucial point regarding the responsibility of readers to be conscious of deception in advertising and the resultant power stemming from public image as a speechgiver -- I think this is a testament to the invasive, persisting power of rhetoric.
I wonder how we can limit our ignorance of rhetorical "tricks," as it were. Is it merely the amassing of information, diving into piles and piles of literature upon certain topics with varying viewpoints? Is our rhetorical awareness always limited when dealing with historical events? I think it is, in a way, and from your post it seems you do too -- the biases of history seem to permanently color future perception of icons like Truth and others, especially because of her illiteracy which limited her message to oratory.
I think the quote from Campbell, "agency is the power to do evil," is eerily correct in displaying the potential of rhetorical success -- often to commit some sort of evil, there must be some backing or justification of some sort. Rhetorical "agency" helps lubricate this goal for the very reason you've specified -- it directly colors perceptions of audiences.
I'm wondering what exactly Barthes would say about how the audience's perception of rhetorical signs manifests as real-time changes in the world. His writings surely indicate the value of the audience, and I wonder what solutions exist for curing our own ignorance.
I completely agree with your thought on agency of the written renditions. It is unfair to obtain an opinion about someone or something when it is portrayed through another person's idea of it. We can only obtain true knowledge of the idea if we hear it from the original writer first. In your second paragraph when discussing the different copies spread across the country, do you think this could be considered a change of agency? I think the truth is somehow jeopardized when changing the dialect, even if it is for the benefit of the audience. If the writer has to change their writing for every single possible audience member, than the validity of the speech comes into play, at least I believe so.
ReplyDelete