This week's readings are only the second and third pieces we've read by women this semester. Astell, the first woman we read, spoke of the need for women to not speak in public, but to use private speech to influence others. Her goal was to "remove those Prejudices that lie in the way of Truth" (852). Her Truth is a divine Truth rooted in her Christian beliefs. I go back and forth on what to make of Astell. I can see Astell as preserving the tradition of male voices and male power, and I can see her as being a little ahead of her time for at least suggesting that women should have some influence, a radical notion in her day. Like Astell, Anzaldua and Campbell seek to influence others. Unlike Astell, Anzaldua and Campbell are not interested in accommodating the status quo, and they are not interested in truth. Both Anzaldua and Campbell seek to use rhetoric to affect change. In their efforts to effect change, they complicate our understanding of rhetoric.
Anzaldua says that "if you want to hurt me, talk bad about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity - I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself" (1588). No other rhetorician we've studied has so closely tied language to identity. Burke describes our terministic screens that direct and deflect our attention. Richards argues that words by themselves mean nothing, that they must be interpreted. But Anzaldua ties language to the self, not only to the act of interpretation. If one's language is disrespected, the person is disrespected. Anzaldua describes the shame and hurt felt when one of her eight different languages are disrespected (1586, 1588). She describes the opposition she faced when she wanted to teach Chicano literature to her Chicano high school students (1589). She describes the pain of writing from as a multilingual, multiethnic woman, but how writing is healing (1594-1596). These incidents were not just insults to her language, they were insults to her.
Anzaldua seeks to use writing to bring together the many parts of herself so she can a "mestiza" successful in "the straddling of two or more cultures" (1598). She wants to show others how to be this mestiza: "She learns to juggle cultures. She has a plural personality, she operates in a pluralistic mode - nothing is thrust out, the good the bad and the ugly, nothing rejected, nothing abandoned. Not only does she sustain contradictions, she turns the ambivalence into something else" (1598). Anzaldua believes that an inclusive, pluralistic view of the world can help in "healing the split that originates in the very foundation of our lives, our culture, our language, our thoughts" (1598). She wants to change culture from one that sees the world as "us and them" to one that sees the world as an inclusive "we." This change in culture requires each of us to value many voices and many languages.
I agree with Bruce that Campbell's main point is her concept of consciousness raising, and that this is a way of creating the audience so the audience can be persuaded. For women's rights to advance, Campbell argues that women must join forces and understand that what women thought were shortcomings in the self are are actually systemic problems (130). Campbell encourages women to share their experiences and connect those experiences with larger issues. Campbell says that "As a process, consciousness raising requires that the personal be transcended by moving towards the structural, that the individual be transcended by moving towards the political" (131). In other words, women's stories must illustrate social inequities.
Campbell says that "The sex role requirements for women contradict the dominant values of American culture - self-reliance, achievement, and independence" (125-126). She seeks to challenge this contradiction, and to change systemic sexism into a more equitable society. Campbell suggests that the way to do this is for it to be OK for women to be self-reliant and independent. From the theory and feminist research methodology I've read, many feminists today do not advocate for this solution. Instead, many feminists argue for a cooperative, interdependent world view and epistemology. While I agree with Campbell that there is unequal treatment of men and women and that we need consciousness raising, I believe women should not simply adopt traditional male roles, but women should transform these roles.
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