Places to Stand: The Practices and Politics of Writing Histories

Abstract

This article situates itself within recent calls for rhetorical studies to expand its regional and cultural scope, offering an analysis of rhetorical constitution in republican Ecuador. Identifying the unavoidable ethical problems that arise when rhetoricians travel, the article argues for a flexible, learning-focused approach to rhetorical historiography that neither abandons existing rhetorical concepts nor rests easily in the face of their limitations. In light of the new insights that emerge when Burke's constitutional theories encounter Ecuador's complicated constitutional scene, the article suggests that our understandings of how rhetoric works can be tempered—both bent and strengthened—by displacement.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Stacy DeRuiter, Sarah Hallenbeck, Debra Hawhee, Lauren Kroiz, and Amy Wan for their feedback as this article developed. Thanks also to Bo Wang, Janine Solberg, Roxanne Mountford, Peter Mortensen, and Ekaterina Haskins for making the surrounding special issue a reality.

Notes

1. Based on data drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau, The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that in 2008 only 1.3% of the U.S. population held a nonprofessional doctorate. Alone, that rarified position occupied (or pursued) by most readers of this journal should remind us of the particularity of the lifeworlds from which we advance the history of rhetoric (“Educational” 2009).

2. Justifications based on our (U.S. American rhetoric scholars') use of rhetorical histories can take many forms with varying consequences. This article itself strays in that direction to the extent that it asks U.S. rhetoricians to reconsider “our” rhetorical theories in light of “other” histories. My caution, however, is more directed toward the imperative to ask questions such as, “How does this idea connect to U.S. university pedagogy?” or “How might this concept also be applied to U.S. contexts?” which not only privilege the perspective of a U.S.-based author and audience but also reduce the complexities of context in order to prioritize pragmatic application.

3. I am, of course, not the first person to raise this issue. It has been a long-term source of debate, engaged both directly and indirectly in published accounts and in conference halls (perhaps most notably in the Rhetoric Society of America's 12th biennial conference, in 2006, on “Sizing Up” rhetoric).

4. This is the subject of a recent exchange between Scott Stroud and LuMing Mao in the pages of Rhetoric Society Quarterly (Mao 2011; Stroud 2009, 2011).

5. “Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it” (Matthew 7:24–27).

6. Burke himself acknowledges this point when he expresses his discomfort with William F. Irmscher's textbook, The Holt Guide to English, which uses Burke's pentad as a guide for invention. Burke notes, “Irmscher makes one mistake in comparing the pentad with Aristotle's topics. In the Rhetoric, for instance, Aristotle's list is telling the writer what to say, but the pentad in effect is telling the writer what to ask” (1978, 332).

7. Ecuador is not the only republic with a history of multiple constitutions. Georgetown University's Political Database of the Americas, for example, links to at least two separate Constitutions for each of the republics of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Paraguay, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela.

8. One does occasionally see “citizen” used in this era as a more general term for a petitioner, regardless of his or her actual citizenship status. When I refer to citizenship here, I'm invoking the constitutional meaning, not that more colloquial use, because “Indian” and “citizen” were often mutually exclusive terms for referencing petitioners.

9. The history of Afro-Ecuadorian political oppression is beyond the scope of this project, but it should be noted that Afro-Ecuadorians have also been regularly excluded from participation and have been less visible than indigenous people thanks, in part, to the narratives examined here.