Notes on Bo Wang, "Comparative Rhetoric, Postcolonial Studies, and Transnational Feminisms"

Wang, Bo. "Comparative Rhetoric, Postcolonial Studies, and Transnational Feminisms: A Geopolitical Approach." Rhetoric Society Quarterly, vol. 43, no. 3, 2013, pp. 226-242 DOI:10.1080/02773945.2013.792692

This is another potential article for my undergraduate comparative rhetoric class because, like Mao, Wang discusses an approach to comparative rhetoric and then applies it to an example. In this case, rather than applying her recommendations to one particular text, Wang looks at a whole body of work--the women's journals published in China in the early twentieth century. 

One of the issues that Wang starts out critiquing is the tendency to view non-Western rhetorics through a Western lens. She also mentions the problem of not having enough knowledge of the other culture. Later, she quotes Rey Chow, who points to the danger of Westerners having a lot of information at hand about their own cultures and not as much about the other cultures, which "enable[s] their studies [about their own cultures] to become ever more nuanced and refined," while their studies of other traditions amount to "a crude lumping together of other histories, cultures, and languages with scant regard to exactly the same kinds of details an internal dynamics of thought that, theoretically speaking, should be part of the study of any tradition" (qtd. in Wang 232). This results in a Western view that not surprisingly argues that the other cultures aren't as subtle or developed as the West is. This isn't just a problem of accessibility to information, I don't think; I think that Chow and Wang are suggesting a sort of "ignorant confidence" on the parts of those doing research with inadequate preparation. [It's something that I worry about in my own work, which is probably why I'm taking so long to work on my research...]

Wang calls for "a new and more contemporary engagement with transnational spaces, hybrid identities, and subjectivities grounded in differences related to gender, class, race, and culture" (228). Specifically, she points out that "most scholarship in comparative rhetoric still focuses on canonical texts by elite male authors" (230). [This had me worrying again about my own attention to "canonical" writers--(mostly) male writers who are already discussed a lot in fields such as comparative literature and other disciplines. As I mentioned in my notes on the book about Yang Kui, I felt like his wife, Ye Tao, who was by many accounts a powerful public speaker, kind of disappeared into the background. I feel like I should learn more about her, as well as about other women rhetors in Taiwan. (I have a book about Xie Xuehong 謝雪紅, for instance, that I have been meaning to read for a long time. Maybe I should add that to my list.)]

[The two women I mentioned in the previous paragraph are relatively canonical, however. Wang mentions Roberta Binkley's study that pointed out that women prophets were silenced; this made me think of the Dutch missionary Candidius' discussion of the women prophets or "priestesses" in Sinkan, Formosa. These priestesses, called Inibs, performed religious ceremonies that Candidius describes and seemed to have had the power 

to prophesy good or evil, whether it will be rain, or whether fine and beautiful weather may be expected. They judge concerning unclean places, and banish evil spirits or devils; for, as they say, many evil spirits or devils dwell amongst the people, and these spirits the Inibs banish with much noise and clamour. They also carry hatchets in their hands, and chase the devil till he jumps into the water and is drowned. (Campbell 25)

Of course, one of Candidius' tasks as a missionary was to silence the priestesses, which is accomplished, as his fellow missionary, Rev. Junius, reports:

The priestesses, who were so great an obstacle to our work, have now lost all power, and are treated with contempt, on account of the many falsehoods they formerly promulgated. They are not allowed to enter any houses except their own, and are thus prevented from practising their former idolatry. (Campbell 186)

It might be necessary to think about the roles of these priestesses and how they were silenced in the interests of the patriarchal religion that the missionaries were promulgating. And also to keep in mind who's doing the writing here--it's not the Sinkandians.]

Wang points to the importance of considering in comparative rhetoric "not only what but also how we are reading" (230). She warns about the risks of "reifying the cultural, social, and material conditions of the texts we examine and homogenizing the theories and practices of particular rhetorics" (230). 

Wang argues for taking a "geopolitical approach" that "links cultural specificities with larger geopolitical forces and networks" (233). She argues that such an approach, tied to a concern with "how we read rather than what we read," can "allow us to rethink history, identity, and the nature of theoretical investigation in our field and to write new narratives that complicate our understanding of non-Western rhetorical traditions" (233-4). [One question I have here, and that's informed by the example she gives at the end of the essay, concerns the contrast between how we read and what we read: it seems to me that her selection of the women's journals and their articles is stressing the what as much as the how--if we don't pay attention to what we read, wouldn't that just lead to more readings of canonical works? What am I missing here in her contrast between the two?]

Wang goes on to argue for "a shift away from the study of discrete national rhetorics" and a need to "focus on the negotiation and exchanges through which rhetorical genres, concepts, and strategies come into being: the economics of knowledge, social relations, power, and the symbolic actions that engender rhetoric" (235). [How do we shift away from "discrete national rhetorics?" I guess I'm wondering what a national rhetoric is, for that matter. When Wang examines the writing of early twentieth-century Chinese women, is that a discrete (national) group? Or is the fact that the women writers write about women's issues in other countries and bring in translingual references to A Doll's House (238) a sign that this is a more transnational rhetoric, not just the rhetoric of a discrete national group? She mentions "the strategic force of hybridity in forming nüquanzhuyi discourse" (238), so that might be shifting away from national rhetorics.]

She concludes that her study "shows the interconnectedness of rhetorical works and larger networks, and often texts must be reinterpreted within every-changing cultural, historical, and scholarly contexts" (239). I think that one of the values of this study, too, is that it's looking at a body of work rather than just one rhetorical performance. That, and this quote, reminds me of Jenny Edbauer's article on rhetorical ecologies--going beyond the idea of discrete rhetorical situations that are being responded to.