Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Toscano, Aaron, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Dept. of English

Resources and Daily Activities

  • Conference Presentations
    • PCA/ACA Conference Presentation 2022
    • PCAS/ACAS Presentation 2021
    • SEACS 2021 Presentation
    • South Atlantic MLA Conference 2022
  • Dr. Toscano’s Homepage
  • ENGL 2116-014: Introduction to Technical Communication
    • February 1st: Reflection on Workplace Messages
    • February 6th: Plain Language
    • January 11th: More Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Audience & Purpose
    • January 23rd: Résumés and Cover Letters
      • Duty Format for Résumés
      • Peter Profit’s Cover Letter
    • January 25th: More on Résumés and Cover Letters
    • January 30th: Achieving a Readable Style
      • Euphemisms
      • Prose Practice for Next Class
      • Prose Revision Assignment
      • Revising Prose: Efficiency, Accuracy, and Good
      • Sentence Clarity
    • January 9th: Introduction to the Class
    • Major Assignments
  • ENGL 4182/5182: Information Design & Digital Publishing
    • August 21st: Introduction to the Course
      • Rhetorical Principles of Information Design
    • August 28th: Introduction to Information Design
      • Prejudice and Rhetoric
      • Robin Williams’s Principles of Design
    • Classmates Webpages (Fall 2017)
    • December 4th: Presentations
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4182/5182 (Fall 2017)
    • November 13th: More on Color
      • Designing with Color
      • Important Images
    • November 20th: Extra-Textual Elements
    • November 27th: Presentation/Portfolio Workshop
    • November 6th: In Living Color
    • October 16th: Type Fever
      • Typography
    • October 23rd: More on Type
    • October 2nd: MIDTERM FUN!!!
    • October 30th: Working with Graphics
      • Beerknurd Calendar 2018
    • September 11th: Talking about Design without Using “Thingy”
      • Theory, theory, practice
    • September 18th: The Whole Document
    • September 25th: Page Design
  • ENGL 4183/5183: Editing with Digital Technologies
    • August 24th: Introduction to the Class
    • August 31st: Rhetoric, Words, and Composing
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4183/5183 (Fall 2022)
      • Rhetoric of Fear
    • November 16th: Voice and Other Nebulous Writing Terms
      • Finding Dominant Rhetorical Appeals
    • November 2nd: Rhetorical Effects of Punctuation
    • November 30th: Words and Word Classes
    • November 9th: Cohesive Rhythm
    • October 12th: Choosing Adjectivals
    • October 19th: Choosing Nominals
    • October 26th: Stylistic Variations
    • October 5th: Midterm Exam
    • September 14th: Verb is the Word!
    • September 21st: Coordination and Subordination
    • September 28th: Form and Function
    • September 7th: Sentence Patterns
  • ENGL 4275: Rhetoric of Technology
    • April 13th: Authorities in Science and Technology
    • April 15th: Articles on Violence in Video Games
    • April 20th: Presentations
    • April 6th: Technology in the home
    • April 8th: Writing Discussion
    • Assignments for ENGL 4275
    • February 10th: Religion of Technology Part 3 of 3
    • February 12th: Is Love a Technology?
    • February 17th: Technology and Gender
    • February 19th: Technology and Expediency
    • February 24th: Semester Review
    • February 3rd: Religion of Technology Part 1 of 3
    • February 5th: Religion of Technology Part 2 of 3
    • January 13th: Technology and Meaning, a Humanist perspective
    • January 15th: Technology and Democracy
    • January 22nd: The Politics of Technology
    • January 27th: Discussion on Writing as Thinking
    • January 29th: Technology and Postmodernism
    • January 8th: Introduction to the Course
    • March 11th: Writing and Other Fun
    • March 16th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 1 of 2
    • March 18th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 2 of 2
    • March 23rd: Inception (2010)
    • March 25th: Writing and Reflecting Discussion
    • March 30th & April 1st: Count Zero
    • March 9th: William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984)
  • ENGL 6166: Rhetorical Theory
    • April 12th: Knoblauch. Ch. 4 and Ch. 5
    • April 19th: Jacques Derrida’s Positions
    • April 26th:  Feminisms and Rhetorics
    • April 5th: Knoblauch. Ch. 3 and More Constitutive Rhetoric
    • February 15th: Isocrates (Part 2)
    • February 1st: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Books 2 & 3
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 2
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 3
    • February 22nd: St. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine [Rhetoric]
    • February 8th: Isocrates (Part 1)-2nd Half of Class
    • January 11th: Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Plato’s Phaedrus
    • January 25th: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Book 1
    • March 15th: Descartes, Rene, Discourse on Method
    • March 1st: Knoblauch. Ch. 1 and 2
    • March 22nd: Mary Wollstonecraft
    • March 29th: Second Wave Feminist Rhetoric
    • May 3rd: Knoblauch. Ch. 6, 7, and “Afterword”
    • Rhetorical Theory Assignments
  • ENGL/COMM/WRDS: The Rhetoric of Fear
    • February 7th: Fallacies Part 3 and American Politics Part 2
    • January 10th: Introduction to the Class
    • January 17th: Scapegoats & Conspiracies
    • January 24th: The Rhetoric of Fear and Fallacies Part 1
    • January 31st: Fallacies Part 2 and American Politics Part 1
    • Major Assignments
  • LBST 2212-124, 125, 126, & 127
    • August 21st: Introduction to Class
    • August 23rd: Humanistic Approach to Science Fiction
    • August 26th: Robots and Zombies
    • August 28th: Futurism, an Introduction
    • August 30th: R. A. Lafferty “Slow Tuesday Night” (1965)
    • December 2nd: Technological Augmentation
    • December 4th: Posthumanism
    • November 11th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2)
    • November 13th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2 con’t)
    • November 18th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 1)
      • More Questions than Answers
    • November 1st: Games Reality Plays (part II)
    • November 20th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 2)
    • November 6th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 1)
    • October 14th: More Autonomous Fun
    • October 16th: Autonomous Conclusion
    • October 21st: Sci Fi in the Domestic Sphere
    • October 23rd: Social Aphasia
    • October 25th: Dust in the Wind
    • October 28th: Gender Liminality and Roles
    • October 2nd: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • October 30th: Games Reality Plays (part I)
    • October 9th: Approaching Autonomous
      • Analyzing Prose in Autonomous
    • September 11th: The Time Machine
    • September 16th: The Alien Other
    • September 18th: Post-apocalyptic Worlds
    • September 20th: Dystopian Visions
    • September 23rd: World’s Beyond
    • September 25th: Gender Studies and Science Fiction
    • September 30th: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • September 4th: Science Fiction and Social Breakdown
      • More on Ellison
      • More on Forster
    • September 9th: The Time Machine
  • LBST 2213-110: Science, Technology, and Society
    • August 22nd: Science and Technology from a Humanistic Perspective
    • August 24th: Science and Technology, a Humanistic Approach
    • August 29th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 2
    • August 31st: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 3 and 4
    • December 5th: Video Games and Violence, a more nuanced view
    • November 14th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes. (1964) Ch. 27-end
    • November 16th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Preface-Ch. 8
    • November 21st: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Ch. 9-Ch. 16
    • November 28th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ch. 17-Ch. 24
    • November 30th: Violence in Video Games
    • November 7th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes Ch. 1-17
    • November 9th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes, Ch. 18-26
    • October 12th: Lies Economics Tells
    • October 17th: Brief Histories of Medicine, Salerno, and Galen
    • October 19th: Politicizing Science and Medicine
    • October 24th: COVID-19 Facial Covering Rhetoric
    • October 26th: Wells, H. G. Time Machine. Ch. 1-5
    • October 31st: Wells, H. G. The Time Machine Ch. 6-The End
    • October 3rd: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 12th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 19th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Prefaces and Ch. 1
    • September 26th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 2
    • September 28th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 5 and 6
    • September 7th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 5 and 6
  • New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology (Spring 2021)
    • April 13th: Virtually ‘Real’ Environments
    • April 20th: Rhetoric/Composition Defines New Media
    • April 27th: Sub/Cultural Politics, Hegemony, and Agency
    • April 6th: Capitalist Realism
    • February 16: Misunderstanding the Internet
    • February 23rd: Our Public Sphere and the Media
    • February 2nd: Introduction to Cultural Studies
    • January 26th: Introduction to New Media
    • Major Assignments for New Media (Spring 2021)
    • March 16th: Identity Politics
    • March 23rd: Social Construction of Gender and Sexuality
    • March 2nd: Foundational Thinkers in Cultural Studies
    • March 30th: Hyperreality
    • March 9th: Globalization & Postmodernism
    • May 4th: Wrapping Up The Semester
      • Jodi Dean “The The Illusion of Democracy” & “Communicative Capitalism”
      • Social Construction of Sexuality
  • Science Fiction in American Culture (Summer I–2020)
    • Assignments for Science Fiction in American Culture
    • Cultural Studies and Science Fiction Films
    • June 10th: Interstellar and Exploration themes
    • June 11th: Bicentennial Man
    • June 15th: I’m Only Human…Or am I?
    • June 16th: Wall-E and Environment
    • June 17th: Wall-E (2008) and Technology
    • June 18th: Interactivity in Video Games
    • June 1st: Firefly (2002) and Myth
    • June 2nd: “Johnny Mnemonic”
    • June 3rd: “New Rose Hotel”
    • June 4th: “Burning Chrome”
    • June 8th: Conformity and Monotony
    • June 9th: Cultural Constructions of Beauty
    • May 18th: Introduction to Class
    • May 19th: American Culture, an Introduction
    • May 20th: The Matrix
    • May 21st: Gender and Science Fiction
    • May 25th: Goals for I, Robot
    • May 26th: Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot
    • May 27th: Hackers and Slackers
    • May 30th: Inception
  • Teaching Portfolio
  • Topics for Analysis
    • A Practical Editing Situation
    • American Culture, an Introduction
    • Efficiency in Writing Reviews
    • Feminism, An Introduction
    • Fordism/Taylorism
    • Frankenstein Part I
    • Frankenstein Part II
    • Futurism Introduction
    • How to Lie with Statistics
    • Isaac Asimov’s “A Cult of Ignorance”
    • Langdon Winner Summary: The Politics of Technology
    • Marxist Theory (cultural analysis)
    • Oral Presentations
    • Oratory and Argument Analysis
    • Our Public Sphere
    • Postmodernism Introduction
    • Protesting Confederate Place
    • Punctuation Refresher
    • QT, the Existential Robot
    • Religion of Technology Discussion
    • Rhetoric, an Introduction
      • Analyzing the Culture of Technical Writer Ads
      • Rhetoric of Technology
      • Visual Culture
      • Visual Perception
      • Visual Perception, Culture, and Rhetoric
      • Visual Rhetoric
      • Visuals for Technical Communication
      • World War I Propaganda
    • The Great I, Robot Discussion
      • I, Robot Short Essay Topics
    • The Rhetoric of Video Games: A Cultural Perspective
      • Civilization, an Analysis
    • The Sopranos
    • Why Science Fiction?
    • Zombies and Consumption Satire
  • Video Games & American Culture
    • April 14th: Phallocentrism
    • April 21st: Video Games and Neoliberalism
    • April 7th: Video Games and Conquest
    • Assignments for Video Games & American Culture
    • February 10th: Aesthetics and Culture
    • February 17th: Narrative and Catharsis
    • February 24th: Serious Games
    • February 3rd: More History of Video Games
    • January 13th: Introduction to the course
    • January 20th: Introduction to Video Game Studies
    • January 27th: Games & Culture
      • Marxism for Video Game Analysis
      • Postmodernism for Video Game Analysis
    • March 24th: Realism, Interpretation(s), and Meaning Making
    • March 31st: Feminist Perspectives and Politics
    • March 3rd: Risky Business?

Contact Me

Office: Fretwell 255F
Email: atoscano@uncc.edu
ENGL 6166: Rhetorical Theory » April 26th:  Feminisms and Rhetorics

April 26th:  Feminisms and Rhetorics

Plan for the Day

  • Discuss your Rhetoric/al Project topics
  • Look ahead…to the end of the semester (can you believe it’s May next week?)
  • Discuss your Rhetoric/al Project topics
  • The Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition
    • Fall 2023 FemRhet Conference at Spellman College in Atlanta
  • Discuss your Rhetoric/al Project topics
  • Biesecker’s “Towards a Transactional View of Rhetorical and Feminist Theory”
  • Discuss your Rhetoric/al Project topics
  • Myers’s “Cicero’s (S)Trumpet”
  • Discuss your Rhetoric/al Project topics
  • SPQR: Senātus Populusque Rōmānus
    • The Roman Senate and the People
    • Notice which comes first…

Your Rhetoric/al Project is due next week on Canvas by Wednesday, 5/04, 11:00 pm (new deadline). Then, you just have to create a 5-10 min video for you final–Due 5/10 by 11:00 pm.

Rhetoric/al Projects

I know you’ve been working on these for quite some time, so let’s figure out where we are. I’m sure some of you will have similar questions, so it will help to answer them now. Let’s take a look at the Major Assignments Page if we need to. This could be the start of a draft that’s well along for a publication venue. I hope this class has inspired you to want to analyze the rhetoric, discourse, and/or meaning making of a text, speech, etc. (purposely vague). What is persuasive about the discourse? What a priori meanings help convince audiences of something? What hidden or subtle assumptions govern an argument or presentation?

Feminist Rhetorics

This article on ThoughtCo. from Richard Nordquist was linked on March 29th’s page (4 weeks ago…), and it might be helpful in understanding the ways scholars are approaching feminisms and rhetorics (notice the plural usage). The article has an interesting point regarding the sophists and Platonists, where “sophistic rhetoric [is] a feminist rhetoric” and follows the sophists’ belief “that law and truth derived from nomoi, local habits or customs that could change from city to city, region to region”; whereas, “the Platonic tradition, of course, challenged this sort of relativism, insisting on the ideal of Truth (logos, universal laws that would be acommunal).”—cites James E. Porter, Rhetorical Ethics and Internetworked Writing. Ablex, 1998: 99.

  • In fact, later down the page (99—which I cite because that’s what one’s supposed to do with paginated books…), Porter defends the sophists and recognizes the following:
    “Truth is socially and culturally constituted, but that does not mean that it cannot be taken seriously. In fact, ‘what people believe’ is the basis for rhetoric.”
  • Another unpaginated quote we should discuss is this one from Anne Teresa Demo:
    “[F]eminist rhetoric frequently occurs away from the platforms and statehouses of government. Feminist scholarship in rhetorical studies, as Bonnie Dow reminds us, ‘must turn its attention to the variety of contexts in which feminist struggle occurs.'” (253)
    —”The Guerrilla Girls’ Comic Politics of Subversion.” Visual Rhetoric: A Reader in Communication and American Culture, ed. by Lester C. Olson, Cara A. Finnegan, and Diane S. Hope. Sage, 2008.
  • Lastly, citing C. Jan Swearingen,
    • “The feminine aspects of persuading that have been denigrated as seduction can be similarly rescued through an examination of the close ties among emotion, love, adhesion, and persuasion in the pre-Socratic lexicon” (128-129).
    • Earlier she notes that “the figures and traits that the Greek rhetorical theory came to assign to pistis and peitho recur among feminine qualities encoded in New Testament metaphors of the church as a bride and of the community of believers as sharing selflessly and as nurturing all nations” (128).
    • “Feminist and Marxist critiques of these Christian values emphasize faith as submission as an instrument of oppression and social control not only over women but over other underclasses as well” (128).
      —C. Jan Swearingen, “Pistis, Expression, and Belief.” A Rhetoric of Doing: Essays on Written Discourse in Honor of James L. Kinneavy, ed. by Stephen P. Witte, Neil Nakadate, and Roger D. Cherry. Southern Illinois University Press, 1992.

pistis: sometimes just translated as ‘faith,’ it also can mean good faith or trust.
peitho: persuasion; also, in some histories of mythology, Peitho is Aphrodite’s daughter.
Peitho is the name of the CFSHRC journal.

Although the above and our entire conversation, can’t capture the entirety of feminist rhetorics, what is your assumption of the prevailing goal of such analyses?

Biesecker’s “Towards a Transactional View of Rhetorical and Feminist Theory”

Barbara A. Biesecker is still an active scholar and now at the University of Georgia. You’ll notice she’s in the Communication Studies Department there. Rhetoric straddles Communications and English and Classics (but often with an ancient focus). Maybe if we had another entire semester, we’d dive into all the differences, but they really come down to disciplinary penchant…and gatekeeping. The three epigraphs on Biesecker’s article are from important figures:

  • Kenneth Burke: A rather important figure in contemporary rhetoric/composition theory—he even has his own society. Burke brought a focus on symbols to the study and analysis of rhetoric.
    • Our assumptions of reality are based on our indoctrination into a or several types of systems of belief: religion, Western, capitalism, Southern, etc.
  • Richard Weaver: Interestingly, this important theorist for my Master’s thesis is prominent in conservative and right-leaning intellectual circles (makes perfect sense).
  • Hélène Cixous (sɪk-su): French-Algerian post-structural feminist philosopher.

Biesecker’s lament in her introduction that “there still is no scholarly journal whose specific charge is to contemplate conventional assumptions and methods of rhetorical theory and criticism by taking ‘sexual difference’ into account” (86) has been corrected, but it hasn’t been for long. The CFSHRC started its Special Interest Group at CCCC in 1994 and started its biennial conference in 1997. I’m not sure Biesecker goes to either FemRhet or CCCC.

  • p. 86 and n2: Biesecker chooses to use the term ‘sexual difference’ and explains why through Judith Butler’s point that using the term gender “implicitly retains the belief in a mimetic relation of gender to sex whereby gender mirrors sex or is otherwise restricted by it.”
    • Some more quotes from Butler’s article “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal, vol. 40, no. 4 (Dec. 1988): pp. 519-531.
    • p. 520: “Feminist theory has often been critical of naturalistic explanations of sex and sexuality that assume that the meaning of women’s social existence can be derived from some fact of their physiology.”
    • p. 521: “the body is a historical situation…a manner of doing dramatizing, and reproducing a historical situation.”
    • p. 522: “those who fail to do their gender right are regularly punished.”
      • How so? Think of examples where women or men appear to perform roles opposite of the gender.
      • Can you think of a situation where one gender is not punished for performing the opposite gender’s prescribed role?
  • p. 87: “primarily male authored…Rhetoric is a discipline whose distinctive characteristic is its focus on public address, a realm to which women as a class have historically been denied access.”
    • “the argument on which the exclusion of women has been predicated is exposed as an alibi for sexist (cultural) politics”
  • p. 88: “it may be the case that the radical potential of the second approach is occluded by a pervasive tendency to forfeit too quickly the insights afforded by a decidedly rhetorical perspective”
  • p. 89: “Rhetoric is a discipline that dedicates itself to the particular and not to the wholly generalizable, to the contingent or provisional and not to the permanent or transhistorical, to the here and now and not to the always and already, to doxa and not to aletheia…”
    • doxa: apparent, perceived knowledge (not certainty or empirical)
    • aletheia: truth or reality
  • p. 89: “Derrida and Lacan continue to receive a less than warm reception by rhetorical theorists because both seem at best indifferent to and at worst interested in subverting the very possibility of intending consciousness.”
  • Biesecker’s thesis p. 89: “‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ can be read…as a rhetoric, as a treatise that seeks to provide women with the means by which they may, through language, actively and strategically intervene in the public sphere.”
    • Cixous argues:
      • “It is necessary that woman write herself: that woman write about woman and bring women to writing…”
      • “It is necessary that woman put herself into the text—as into the world, and into history—by her own movement.”
    • Via Ann Wilson: “the symbolic order, as is conventionally understood, only allows woman to speak in discourse which is overdetermined by The Father.”
    • Consider the discussion we had about using the language of the oppressor or simply oppression.
  • p. 91: “woman’s place is the uncanny realm of the ‘inbetween.’ She is at once both inside and outside the center and, thus, she ‘always occurs simultaneously in several places'”
  • p. 92: Care to comment on this comparison of women to birds and robbers
  • pp. 92-93: “it is precisely within and against the tyranny of the proper (what rhetoricians call the ‘appropriate’) that Cixous insists women must work. How? By doing nothing less than “stealing” or unfixing the syntax, the grammar, and the signs of the dominant discourse so as to make it possible for new meanings to circulate and ‘fly.'”
  • p. 93: “[women] can also win a rhetorical beginning by ‘stealing’ back and recoding particular signs within the phallocentric system….women can reconsolidate their sign or change its function by (re)turning to the body.
    • What does it mean to return to the body?
  • p. 93: “[Cixous] posits the move toward the body as a way into the space of the unconscious.”
    • “…a counter-hegemonic rhetoric…”
  • Well, maybe we ought to think about the features of male, phallocentric writing.
    • The manifesto
    • The polemic or philippic…

Nancy Myers’s “Cicero’s (S)Trumpet”

Nancy Myers is still active and just up the road at UNC Greensboro. I met her at a conference once, and a few alumni (or alumnae) of the MA program here have gone on to get PhDs at UNCG. Alison’s MILS is from UNCG, btw.

Before getting into the article, let’s consider the limits of our discussion. A retelling of the post-Julius Caesar Roman Empire is beyond the scope of this class. We can use historical references to enhance our discussion, but let’s remember to bring the conversation back to rhetoric and, specifically, what might be the motives of these political figures.

  • Mark Antony: (83 BCE – 30 BCE) Roman general and admirer/follower of J. Caesar; preferred Roman empire over republican system; one of three in the Second Triumvirate.
  • (Marcus Tullius) Cicero: (106 BCE – 43 BCE) Roman senator and orator who challenged J. Caesar and any autocratic rule; he preferred the system in place: rich men ruling in an oligarchical republic…how barbaric they were back then.

By the way, the HBO series Rome (2005-2007) is a completely accurate reproduction of the historical events surrounding J. Caesar’s assassination and Octavian’s (Caesar Augustus) rise to power. Mark Antony and Cicero are prominent characters.

After reading Myers’s article on Cicero’s problems with Mark Antony’s philandering, one wonders what he would have said had he lived to see Antony and Cleopatra.

Key Points from the Article

  • p. 337: “Cicero ends the vitriolic Second Philippic against Mark Antony (Marcus Antonius) by calling for a return to the republic even at the expense of his own life.”
    • And he gets his wish…sort of.
  • pp. 337-338: “…condemn the public and private life of Mark Antony by employing the traditional and tired topoi of both the judicial and deliberative oral discourses of the public sphere.”
  • p. 338: Pamphlets for wider circulation
    • But how wide?
    • I have seen literacy rate estimates for Ancient Rome to be between 5%-15%, but does that mean the city of Rome (where I would assume a higher rate) or the entire Empire (where I would assume a lower rate in the provinces)?
    • “William Harris (1989) suggests that at no point did more than 10 to 15 percent of the population of the Hellenistic and Roman Mediterranean possess the ability to read, and probably far fewer could write.” (“Literacy and Education, Hellenistic and Roman Period”)
    • In the city of Rome, even vandals had to graffiti properly…
  • p. 339: “Cicero advocated a return to the republic while Antony sought sole control….Cicero used rhetoric while Antony primarily employed military force.”
  • p. 339: The Second Philippic‘s references to woman…
    • “…operate in the male-dominated public context by turning contemporary women into myths and by reinforcing the status quo of the public sphere through invoking the private one;”
    • “become a meeting point for the different but compatible politics of both male and female Romans.”
  • p. 340: Cicero shows himself to be working for the good of Rome while he portrays Antony as being self-serving and wanting power.
  • p. 341: “Women become mythic representations…pitted against suffering gentle noble wives and mothers.”
    • dignitas: “‘an aristocratic ideal of glory'”
    • auctoritas: “‘personal influence'”
  • p. 342: “Antony has degraded the Antonii name…”
    • “Antony has debased his noble mother by putting her at not only the end of the procession but also behind a disreputable woman far beneath Julia’s social standing.”
    • I find it hard for one to argue being “for the people” and subscribing to such mores like social standing.
  • p. 343: “Although adultery was considered usual for males, it was less acceptable for females; women, however, could divorce as easily as men.”
  • p. 344: “Whether rhetoric, belief, or actuality, slavish emotion for a woman was dishonorable.”
  • p. 345: “If he cannot control his sexual desires, how can he control Rome? The emotional desire for women is considered the failing of the strong male, so Cicero weaves yet a more damning portrayal of Antony as her love slave.”
    • I guess that double standard goes back a bit.
    • Does this come up today? When and where?
  • p. 346: “Cicero emasculates Antony…”
  • p. 347: Ethos of emasculation
    • Myers never writes the word “ethos”: it only comes up in quotations and citations…
  • p. 348: Cicero as the paterfamilias of Rome.
  • p. 349: “The mingling of public and private in the birth metaphor champions patriarchal authority in both spheres.”

Thinking about the Article as a Model for Publication

This article is different from most, nearly all, of our other readings. What do you think about it as a piece of academic writing? Beyond the topic, what is the author’s thesis, her main argument? What does this article tell us about how one picks and chooses what to present? After all, Derrida and Cixous (echoed by Biesecker above) know there is always a different place to begin (91).

In the abstract to this article, Myers claims,
This historically contextualized rhetorical analysis offers a complex understanding of Roman women as both historical entities and rhetorical representations. The article illustrates the importance of understanding not only women in the rhetorical tradition but also mythical portrayals of women as an argumentative strategy.
What did you learn about Roman women?

Next Class

Last class next week (5/03)!!! We’ll finish up with Knoblauch Ch. 6 and 7. I’m going to extend the deadline of your final paper until Wednesday, 5/04, and it’ll be due on Canvas by 11:00pm.

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