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In this piece, Bizzell employs the metaphor of a stockmarket report to talk about the process of editing the second edition of The Rhetorical Tradition because it is a metaphor that reflects “the volatility of the tradition as it appears in our time” (111). She explains that there has been no waning interest in, and indeed increased demand for, what is seen as the “traditional tradition”–Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Longinus, Blair, etc. Meanwhile there has been rising interest in “new traditions,” of which there are two primary varieties. First, there are those that either existed previously but were thought minor (like the sophists) or theorists outside the “traditional tradition” who are now seen as having rhetorical relevance (Nietzsche, Bahktin, etc). Bizzell describes these as risky stocks, because they can quickly go out of fashion. The second kind of “new tradition” coincides with the changing demographics of the academy–particularly the rise of women and people of color in the discipline–and represents work previously unknown to rhetoric because it had either been silenced or because the resources weren’t there to explain why they were important for rhetoric. Bizzell describes these “stocks” as showing real growth potential.

Bizzell argues that anthologies/canons represent who is in power in a discipline. So the revising of the rhetorical tradition to include some of these “new traditions” necessitates a more diverse group of scholars who can argue for the relevance of these texts. Bizzell responds to the critique that the additions from women and minorities are not pieces that are equivalent to the pieces included from the “traditional tradition” by arguing that we’ve spent so much time studying the “traditional tradition” that we recognize it all as being the same–as being theory-like or philosophy-like–when it is, in fact, heterogenous. We need to continue to theorize the voices of resistance and critical awareness of language found in these “new tradition” while also using a critical lens to unpack the differences and heterogeneity in the “traditional tradition.” Ultimately, Bizzell argues, the tradition is never static, but rather changes as the discipline changes.

Comments:

This is a really interesting and useful take on the politics of canonization, and I particularly appreciate Bizzell’s response to critiques of additions not doing the same kind of theory work as the “traditional tradition.”

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Summary

In this piece, Bahkru is drawing on her own transnational research experience to discuss key aspects of feminist methodology that are particularly relevant for carrying out feminist transnational research. She describes the scope and method of her comparative study of women’s reproductive health NGOs in Ireland and the US. She explains that she had originally planned to also include work happening in India, but ultimately decided to drop the case study from India. In the rest of the piece, she reflects on her decision to drop the Indian case study, paying particular attention to issues of self-reflexivity, insider/outsider status, and questions about objectivity as key feminist methodological considerations that encourage researchers to think about their positionality in the research process. Self-reflexivity involves holding yourself accountable, examining your position in the research process, being honest about your political motives. Bahkru omits the India case study because she realizes that she doesn’t have the resources to sufficiently immerse herself in the context to understand the work that is being done. She also reflects on the tensions between the way she saw her identity and the way the people working in the Irish NGO saw her identity. Because of her own position, easy divisions between insider/outsider were never available to her, which is a reminder of Uma Narayan’s rejoinder that we must work across difference if we want to build coalitions.

Key Quotes

“I argue that it is not possible for feminist researchers to produce objective knowledge and simultaneously resist relativism in the existing spaces of conceptual frameworks of feminist knowledge generation. In examining Donna Haraway’s notion of situated knowledge, I contend that it is only by creating a new paradigm within feminist approaches to research and scientific inquiry that a reconciliation of objective knowledge and the feminist pursuit of social justice can occur without resignation to relativism.” (210)

Comments

What I most appreciate about this piece is the author’s honest reflections about dealing with feminist methodological questions within the material limits of her dissertation research. A lot of feminist methodological work calls for us to do more towards crafting feminist research projects–a call which is necessary and good. But Bahkru’s work offers another example of a research project in which doing less (cutting out a case study) becomes a necessary means of maintaining the feminist integrity of the project.

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In this piece, Dolmage is discussing the myth of Hephaestus through the lens of disability studies as a way to “disrupt our acceptance of an ableist view of rhetorical history” (119). Hephaestus was represented at having his feet twisted backward or to the sides–although his disability was presented as positive rather than stigmatized. He is said to represent a specific form of intelligence known as metis (cunning). Dolmage argues that it’s tempting to think that the image of Hephaestus is a contradiction (the disabled craftsman) or that he represents overcoming disability, but that his difference and his craftsmanship represent metis together. As Dolmage puts it, “In a way his disability is his ability” (122). Dolmage draws on Berlin’s comments in the Octalog to define rhetoric as “the function of power within language,” which naturally connects to issues of the body since the body is disciplined by power, and works to highlight the ways in which the rhetorical histories we’ve constructed privilege the normal, able body. He argues that we have imported our bias against disability into the past and that the concept of metis and the myth of Hephaestus asks us to rethink this tendency. Dolmage instead calls us to look to Hephaestus as a starting point for looking back on rhetorical history for further insight on the division between ability and disability and the role this division plays in rhetoric.

Comments

In a lot of ways, this piece is very similar to some of his later work, but what I really appreciate about this article is the definition of rhetoric he lays out as “the function of power within language.” He returns to this definition and works with it further in his statement in the third Octalog. Overall, this definition of rhetoric that gets away from privileging persuasion and introduces power dynamics is helpful for constructing a rhetorical framework for the kind of work I’m doing.

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Summary

Brueggemann is responding to five problems of representation that inevitably come up when teaching about disability: erasure of disabled subjects, economic arguments against access, the instability of disability as a category, the fact that canonical representations of disability lie, and the question of how to create new, better representations. In this piece she is outlining what she calls an “enabling pedagogy” which regards disability as insight. This is largely a narrative piece in which Brueggemann describes teaching experiences with three different classes where disability was either a topic of inquiry or a significant topic of discussion. These classes include a graduate-level composition pedagogy class, an upper-division literature class centered around disability, and a first-year writing course. In these teaching accounts, Brueggemann highlights the moments wherein critical discussion of disability provides insight, both for her as a teacher and for her students. Not all of them are positive moments–many of them are moments where systems fail and student resistance is incredibly high. But the insights Brueggemann points to are really helpful in demonstrating how intertwined issues of disability are in everyone’s everyday lives–disability becomes a critical lens with which to think about our bodies, our identities, and the spaces and institutions through which we move.

Comments

This is definitely a helpful piece with a lot of practical pedagogical strategies and practices for integrating disability into the classroom, but Brueggemann’s discussion of disability as insight—as a lens that allows us to understand things about ourselves and the spaces in which we move that we wouldn’t otherwise notice—is a really useful concept.

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Summary

Responding to lack of visibility of disability in the field, and argue for an enabling of our pedagogy that will make disability more visible in ways that show the links between those labeled “able-bodied” and those labeled “disabled.” Ultimately, the authors are interested in outlining pedagogical strategies that help to explode the “us/them” dichotomy that emerges as a result of trying to designate particular places for disability. The authors articulate three reasons why disability matters for composition theory: 1) because the field has a long history of “making the invisible visible,” 2) because the field prides itself on its focus on practice, and 3) because we challenge so many other binaries that we are well poised to challenge the abled/disabled binary. After the introduction, the piece is divided into four sections that explore the contributors’ different experiences with disability in the classroom and describe strategies for negotiating the paradox of visibility in the class. These sections each stress in their own way the idea that inclusion and visibility are not enough–we need to actively change the structure of educational environments to collapse the abled/disabled binary.

Key Quotes

On learning disabilities in the classroom: “But dehumanizing metaphors and false analogies eventually harm everyone by supporting a business-as-usual pedagogy that legitimates only one way of knowing in writing classes–that makes learning too frustrating for some and too easy for others. We need to supplement writing-centered instruction, even in our writing classes, not only because people do make knowledge in different ways, but also because everyone can benefit from occasionally using nonwriting strategies to alter perspectives and create the intellectual distance needed for sophisticated revising. The system needs to change not because some people are labeled LD but in spite of it. Those called ‘normal’ also learn along a continuum of difference and would be better challenged if classrooms became more interactive, student-centered, multi-modal, and collaborative.” (380)

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Summary:

Drawing on Roxanne Mountford’s discussion of rhetorical spaces, Dolmage looks at the experience of Ellis Island for immigrants, focusing specifically on the way that the space and processing procedures at Ellis Island rhetorically constructed disability. Dolmage also highlights the ways in which constructions of disability were used to construct race at Ellis Island as well. Throughout the piece, Dolmage analyzes documents from Ellis Island, maps of the island, and photos of people moving through the space. As people moved through Ellis Island, immigrant bodies were literally marked during initial inspection for further medical testing. The decision to make these marks was based on visual cues that the space of the entrance to Ellis Island was designed to elicit, and the language of determining who to mark was laden early on with the language of eugenics. Dolmage argues that this literal marking taught unmarked immigrants to be wary of their own difference and to mark the difference of others.  Responding to “whitewashed” visions of Ellis Island that view it romantically as a rite of passage into American citizenship, Dolmage argues that Ellis Island functioned as a significant point of origin for eugenics. He further argues that the “human test” used at Ellis Island to identify disabled bodies–a test that assumes that one can visually determine “defects” of body and mind–spilled out of that rhetorical space and has become “one of the most pervasive social attitudes about disability” (45).

Comments:

Dolmage emphasizes early on in the piece that he is focusing on the body as a rhetorical, rather than social, construction–a difference he argues is important because understanding the body as a rhetorical construction emphasizes the process of construction over the product. I find his discussion of the body as a rhetorical construction compelling and a more helpful lens for talking about rhetoric and the body than social construction.

Key Quotes:

“The social processing that Ellis Island engendered was all about identifying and sometimes manufacturing abnormal bodies: these elements are out of place; these bodies are disordered. [...] At Ellis Island, the categories of defect and disability that adhere today were strongly grounded if not created, as was the diagnostic gaze that allowed for the nebulous application of the stigma of disability as we know it today. The space of Ellis Island circumscribed certain patterns of movement and practices of visualizing the body. The product was, often, the spectacle of Otherness. And all who passed through Ellis Island also became subject to–and then possessor and executor of–a certain gaze and a certain bodily attitude.” (26)

“The disabled body becomes a loose, flexible, and magnetic symbol easily layered over insinuations of deficiency of all colors, shapes, and locations. In this negative sense, disability functions rhetorically. Eugenic rhetoric, seeking to identify inferior genes, necessarily constructed deviant phenotypes, creating investigatory techniques, a visual shorthand for identifying and marking out undesirable elements.” (39)

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Summary:

In this piece, Dolmage is responding to the objectifying and controlling functions of scientific discourse, which exercises much of its power by laying claim to objectivity. He juxtaposes examples of scientific writing about disability (paying careful attention to the metaphors this writing relies on) with disability narratives that trouble the view presented in scientific discourse. Dolmage argues that “all writing is metaphorical” and that metaphors do not make our accounts “less real or less true,” but rather that the metaphors we use have revolutionary potential (108). This argument is based on the belief that metaphors are primary to our ways of knowing and that they are what allow us to know and make sense of our lives.

To illustrate this argument, Dolmage looks at some specific examples of metaphors of disability that come out of science and medicine and discusses how these metaphors (and the attitudes they carry with them) spill out into other arenas of life, even after they are no longer used in the fields where they originated. For example, he talks about how educators “slow down” the pace of education for those labeled “retarded” but this treatment isn’t based in observable fact–it’s based in the metaphorical elements of the label itself which assumes that intelligence is the same as quick-moving thought. Because these metaphors inform the way that we see and understand the world, they have the potential to do real harm to the people that they erase and/or dehumanize. Dolmage argues that we need to become more conscious of our use of metaphors (and the use of metaphors around us) so that we can think more critically about the meaning they carry and begin to imagine new, revolutionary representations.

Comments:

Dolmage’s analysis of the way metaphor has the power to cause material harm is spot-on, but I really appreciate the way that he works with this analysis to argue that because metaphor is so important to the way we see the world, metaphor also has a revolutionary potential.

Key Quotes:

“The author would like to communicate the idea that metaphor can be used both to challenge these negative constructions, and to create new knowledge that demystifies the experience of being human and expands understanding by broadening perspectives. When a different body conceptualizes the world, the world opens up and the fences come down.” (116)

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Summary:

In this book, Siebers is theorizing disability with three primary goals: 1) making an intervention into critical and cultural theory, 2) responding to critiques of identity politics by “classifying identity as an embodied representational category” (3), and 3) theorizing disability as a minority identity. Throughout this discussion, Siebers highlights and unpacks what he refers to as the “ideology of ability,” or the cultural ideology that has determined ability as the key marker of what constitutes the human. Siebers’ defense of identity politics in the face of critiques from cultural and critical theory is part of an overarching argument that the only way to productively respond to the ideology of ability is for disability to become seen as a politicized minority identity. In response to critiques of identity and identity politics, Siebers defines identity as shifting, social, contextual, and embodied–”a politicized identity possessing the ability to offer social critiques” (22). Siebers argues that claiming a group identity is what enables groups to fight for greater control over their lives, making the critique of minority identities (because these critiques always attack minority identities) conservative and deeply problematic. Because the ideology of ability makes it difficult for people with disabilities to claim disability as a minority identity, Siebers argues for shifting the emphasis in theory away from social construction and towards theories of philosophical realism, which open up room for daily, lived experiences of disability and of disability oppression to become a powerful locus of knowledge, coalition building, and political action.

Comments:

While Siebers’ defense of identity politics is both useful and compelling, I find most useful his discussion of the ideology of ability. As he fleshes this concept out throughout the book, it becomes clear that this is a more useful framework than ableism (which is still a useful term, but more limited in scope) to capture how deeply cultural bias against disability runs. The key assumption of the ideology of ability—that ability is the basis for being seen as human—also helps to explain why the fear of disability is so acute. It also helps us understand disability not just as something created by inaccessible built environments, but as being at the core of systems of Western thought.

Chapter Summaries:

• “Tender Organs, Narcissism, and Identity Politics:” This chapter responds to the accusation of narcissism frequently launched against disability studies and disability activists. Siebers looks at how psychoanalytic discussions of narcissism have proliferated outwards to become a reaction against disability rights movements in which critics argue that disability rights don’t make sense because we can’t possibly accommodate highly individual differences. Siebers argues that we need a critique of the individualization of disability because it unravels the accusation of narcissism and shows how individualization harms by making it difficult to build coalitions for political action.
• “Body Theory:” This chapter responds to conventional representations  of pain which either individualize pain or treat it romantically as something the gives strength or becomes a new form of pleasure. Despite theoretical objections to discussions of reality, Siebers argues that we need more honest portrayals of the reality of daily life with disabilities to counter these problematic representations, open up further possibilities for political alliance, and counter the ideology of ability.
• “Disability Studies and the Future of Identity Politics:” Here, Siebers discusses the difference between social construction and philosophical realism, ultimately arguing that we need to reimagine political identity outside of the terms of individual psychology and self-interest. He defends identity politics as important political work performed by a coalition defined by ideology, history, place and time. He argues that we need a redefinition of the human that does not depend on 18th c definitions of rationality, but rather makes recognizing the humanness of others a condition for our own humanness.
• “Disability as Masquerade:” In this chapter, Siebers shifts ongoing discussions of passing to talk about masquerade, or acting in ways that exaggerate stigma for some effect such as not having one’s disability questioned. Siebers offers six fables/narratives that illustrate the possibilities and problems with masquerade, which argue that masquerade can be a powerful form of communication about disability, challenge assumptions about disability and intervene in systems of disability oppression. However, masquerade also functions in narratives of disability (including narratives where able-bodied people do “drag” performances as people with disabilities) to reinforce the ideology of ability.
• “Disability Experience on Trial:” Here Siebers is responding to poststructural critiques of using experience as evidence and argues that we need to think about the political implications of our theorizing and focus on critique and emancipation.
• “A Sexual Culture for Disabled People:” Siebers thinks about disability and sexuality together in this chapter, arguing that imagining a sexual culture for disabled people defamiliarizes how we currently think about sex, broadening definitions of sexual activity, highlighting the ways in which the ideology of ability determines how we imagine sex, highlighting the very tenuous nature of the distinction between the public and the private, and theorizing patterns of victimization faced by sexual minorities.
• “Sex, Shame, and Disability Identity:”
• “Disability and the Right to Have Rights:”

Quotes:

“When minority identities are pathologized by association with disability, the effect is never, I claim, merely metaphorical–a simple twisting of meaning a degree or two towards pathology. The pathologization of other identities by disability is referential: it summons the historical and representational structures by which disability, sickness, and injury come to signify inferior human status. The appearance of pathology, then, requires that we focus rigorous attention not only on symbolic association with disability but on disability as a reality of the human condition.” (6)

“Thus, identity is not the structure that creates a person’s pristine individuality or inner essence but the structure by which that person identifies and becomes identified with a set of social narratives, ideas, myths, values, and types of knowledge of varying reliability, usefulness, and verifiability. It represents the means by which the person, qua individual, comes to join a particular social body. It also represents the capacity to belong to a collective on the basis not merely of biological tendencies but symbolic ones–the very capacity that distinguishes humans from other animals.” (15)

“Physical pain is highly unpredictable and raw as reality. It pits the mind against body in ways that make the opposition between thought and ideology in most current body theory seem trivial. [...] Pain is not a friend to humanity. It is not a secret resource for political change. It is not a well of delight for the individual. Theories that encourage these interpretations are not only unrealistic about pain; they contribute to the ideology of ability, marginalizing people with disabilities and making their stories of suffering and victimization both politically impotent and difficult to believe.” (64)

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Summary:

In this book, DeVault puts forth a discussion of feminist research methodology premised on the idea that there are no fixed “right practices” in feminist research, but rather shifting and evolving strategies for working within our disciplines while also challenging patriarchal bias within them. DeVault places particular emphasis on the idea of feminist methodology as working towards “excavation”–a term she uses to signify the process of shifting critical perspectives away from the male perspectives traditionally represented in sociology and towards bringing forth women’s knowledge and perspectives. Excavation seems different from other discussions of giving voice to women or adding women’s experience to our sites of research because it is primarily an epistemological project aimed at shifting our ideas of what counts as knowledge and aimed at shifting the epistemological foundations of the field.

DeVault’s book is split into six different parts, the first two of which introduce her own position as a feminist researcher and then unpack the question: what is feminist methodology? In defining feminist methodology, DeVault argues that it is important that we resist defining this work in the conventional terms of our disciplines (see quote below). DeVault instead argues that feminist methodology is a perspective we’ve developed that helps us think critically about methodology. Thus, rather than being an entirely new and separate set of practices, feminist methodology is more so a critical lens for reevaluating accepted research methods and strategizing ways of shifting methods to better reflect feminist commitments. In the second chapter, “Talking Back to Sociology,” DeVault outlines three principles of feminist methodology:

1. Seeks a method that will excavate the knowledge and perspectives of women
2. Works to “minimize harm and control in the research process” (31)
3. Privileges research that will lead to social change that benefits women

For me, the most compelling concept that comes out of DeVault’s work is the idea of excavation because it highlights the epistemological commitments of feminist research. The word itself–excavation–also suggests that the knowledge and perspectives being brought forth have always been present, although ignored, which means that it’s not the researcher alone who is creating knowledge. The struggles and strategies involved in excavation are perhaps most evident in the chapters where DeVault discusses her own research projects. For example, in one chapter she talks about the importance of using her own standpoint and knowledge as a woman to listen to significant gaps and silences in women’s interviews and working to highlight the significance of these silences rather than only listening to what is said. Later chapters also deal with the importance of remembering that ‘woman’ is not a unified, universal category and that the work of excavation also means listening for differences of race and class.

Key Quotes:

“When I am pushed to define feminist methodology simply and completely in the terms of mainstream social science, I risk distorting what feminist methodologists do. Instead of rushing to answer, it may be more useful to notice that the question comes from a discourse that is not eager to make room for us. Feminist scholars insist that the answers to questions should fit with the contours of women’s lives, including our own. Thus, the researchers doing feminist work, and using feminist methods, are the starting point and the anchor for my answer, rather than some established notion of what a ‘methodology’ should look like. The apparently tautological answer (‘It’s what we do’) asserts that feminist researchers should not be expected to explain their methodology fully or definitively in ‘twenty-five words or less’ or in the token article or talk. It puts forward the strong claim that a body of diverse work exists and deserves attention on its own terms.” (23)

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Introduction: “Back to the Future: A Look at the Second Wave of Feminist Epistemology and Methodology,” Fonow and Cook

Fonow and Cook describe this anthology as an interdisciplinary conversation about epistemology and methodology, the latter of which the editors define as the study of actual techniques and practices used in the research process. Taken together, they argue that these interdisciplinary readings reveal important trends in feminist research at the moment. While, like DeVault, they emphasize context, time, and the idea of method as an ongoing discussion as key parts of feminist methodology, the editors also identify four key themes that help delineate feminist methodology: reflexivity, action orientation, attention to the affective components of research, and the use of the situation-at-hand as a research site or genesis of a research project.

Comments:

The four key themes of feminist methodology that Fonow and Cook outline in their introduction are particularly help, especially since they give us a vision of feminist methodology that goes far beyond merely doing research “on” women. These four themes remind us that research on women is not necessarily feminist, but also makes it possible to imagine a research project that is not strictly focused on women but is still feminist in its design.

Chapter Highlights:

• “The Man of Professional Wisdom,” Kathryn Pyne Addelson: This piece draws on and extends Kuhn’s discussion of paradigms to examine more closely processes of knowledge production, as well as the politics of authority and prestige. Addelson ultimately argues that criticism of these processes and of the mechanisms through which something becomes accepted scientific knowledge needs to become a key part of the scientific method.
• “Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought,” Patricia Hill Collins: In this piece, Collins is extending the way black women’s status as “the outsider within” has been used to theorize black women’s experience in literature. Thinking about the concept of the “outsider within” in terms of her own field, Collins argues for the significance of this standpoint and for the importance of theorizing this standpoint within sociology. She argues that black women sociologists occupy the position of the outsider within, giving voice to traditionally ignored perspectives and experiences using the language of the discipline, while also using their position to challenge the limited paradigm of sociology.
• “Quantitative and Qualitative Methods in the Social Sciences: Current Feminist Issues and Practical Strategies,” Toby Epstein Jayaratne and Abigail Stewart: The authors are responding to quantitative vs. qualitative methods debates wherein many have decided that qualitative methods best suit feminist needs. After mapping out this debate and discussing some of the problems with the way the debate has unfolded, the authors ultimately argue that quantitative research does have feminist uses, while it is not true that qualitative methods are necessarily feminist. We need to be critical of bias in all methods and develop research that will be most persuasive in helping to change women’s lives.
• “Race and Class Bias in Qualitative Research on Women,” Lynn Weber Cannon, Elizabeth Higginbotham, and Marianne L. A. Leung: In this piece, the authors draw on their experiences recruiting participants for a study in which they controlled for race and class. They argue that getting a more heterogenous sample requires more labor-intensive recruitment practices and that marginalized participants often have less time and more concerns about anonymity and exploitation. Their research experience, and their account of how drastically their findings would have changed with a more homogenous sample, also demonstrates the need for facing these challenges to end the silencing of marginalized experiences.