The reading—-Rhetoric and Cultural Explanation: A Discussion with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

 In this interview of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, I found it interesting that Spivak does not give an exact definition of Rhetoric when asked.  Rhetoric in our modern time is a rather elusive animal.  It is like the red face monkey in South America, you see it, but you cannot quite grasp it.  Spivak states, “I think that in Derrida there is no concerted, or organized, use of the word rhetoric.” 

This theme of the binary of dominance/oppression  appears in many of the texts and articles that I am ready this semester.  Spivak defines cultural criticism is a study of how “cultural explanations are generated.”  Then she goes on to name the different binaries that basically represent dominance/oppression.  To be a cultural critic, one must look at how the ideological state apparatuses are working to ensure the ruling class’s dominance over the workers who are the oppressed.  Cultural is reflective of the ruling classes values, which in the case of the United States is capitalism.  These binaries are struggle between two groups, and this struggle is the crisis that needs to be managed. 

If this is true, then rhetoric is located at this crisis point.  Rhetoric is the ruling class’s tool to repress the working class because the binary of dominance/oppression, (or theory/practice, or inside academy/outside academy) is not horizontal or on equal footing; it is vertical; therefore hierarchical.  In this view, rhetoric is ideological state apparatus’s tool for violence.  it is violent because it promises to resolve the crisis of the binary, but in actuality rhetoric just manages it, by repressing equality amongst the ruling and working classes

Spivak is asked if she believes that Aristotle deconstructions binaries and their crisis point with his concept of techne, it is an inhabiting the space between theory/practice.  I like her reply “interesting that you point at the connection between rhetoric as an art, or a techne—that “middle” term, which can deconstruct the binary of theory and practice. The deconstruction of something is, of course, not a deconstruction of the binary.”  Even though there is a middle ground, the dominance/oppression binary cannot be taken apart.  It exists because there is the one thing that relies on the other thing.  Spivak goes on to express how balance between the does not really change the hierarchal structure,  “it doesn’t really do away with privileging but only creates a new privilege. I think that tension is productive, whereas balance is suspect.”  I really like this post modern point of view because it reveals the political nature of rhetoric/literature binary and it puts the political into literature.  The tension gives context to composition and literature production.

“Rhetoric is the name of that which is the limit—that which escapes, that which is the residue of efforts at “catching” things with systems.”  I take this quote of Spivak to mean that rhetoric is the name of the box that has no name.  So, this interview makes me think why do we need the unnamed box.  Is it for control of the knowledge, for power?  I don’t know. Overall, I really enjoyed the article by Spivak and found her ideas creating questions within my mind.