Wallerstein, Immanuel European Universalism: The Rhetoric of Power

 
In this tiny but powerful collection of essays adapted from various conference presentations, Wallerstein traces contemporary rhetorics of modernity back to the Sepulveda/Las Casas debate in the 1500s over who has the right to intervene, when, and how in the treatment of Amerindians who were forced to labor in the Spanish system of ecomienda in [...]

Inderpal Grewel and Caren Kaplan — Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices

 
Introduction:  Transnational Feminist Practices and Questions of Postmodernity
 
thoughts on rhetoric:
 
the way terms get co-opted constitutes a form of practice, just as the way that they contain possibilities for critical use is also an oppositional practice.  Specific terms lose their political usefulness when they are disciplined by academia or liberal/conservative agendas.
 
One of main questions their compilation [...]

Appadurai, Arjun “Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization,”

In “Modernity at Large:  Cultural Dimensions of Globalization,” Arjun Appadurai argues that intellectuals in the academy need to begin thinking postnationally about contemporary national crises–a claim that ultimately stimulates questions about the future of patriotism.  Appadurai’s thesis rests on the claim that study of discourse in the Western academy is divorced from other institutional forms [...]

Dirlik, Arif. Global Modernity: Modernity in the Age of Capitalism

In the introduction, Dirlik positions globalization as an ongoing discourse and process that produces a state of global modernity, which in essence is nothing short of modernity gone global and modern day colonialism that reeks of the colonial, economically, politically, socially, and culturally.  Dirlik claims our main challenge is to “achieve a globality beyond the [...]

Mignolo, Walter “Globalization, Civilization Processes, and the Relocation of Languages and Cultures”

In this article, Mignolo explores the complicities of languages, literatures, and the culture of scholarship in the civilizing process, modernity, and globalization, all of which have contributed to the expansion of the “Western world-system” in part by denying the denial of coevalness.  Mignolo reminds us that dominant languages and scholarship came from the same countries [...]

Dussel — “Beyond Eurocentricism”

Dussel begins “Beyond Eurocentricism” by distinguishing between two constructed paradigms of modernity.  Eurocentricism is the belief that modernity is exclusively a European phenomenon that originated from within Europe, began with the Renaissance, and spread over chronological time to the periphery of the modern world.  World is divided between ancient, medival, and modern (beg. with Renaissance).  [...]

“Codex Scripts of Resistance: From Columbus to the Border Patrol” Damian Baca

WARNING: LONG SUMMARY AHEAD. SKIP TO BOTTOM FOR COMMENTS.
In “Codex Scripts of Resistance: From Columbus to Border Control,” Damian Baca (Yeah CCR!) rocks the C & R Ranch with a compelling rhetorical analysis of Mestiz@ rhetorics of resistance and challenges us to reconceptualize our ethnocentric, alphacentric, hegemonic views and pedagogies of rhetoric and [...]

Manifesto for Social Histories of Rhetoric

Manifesto: Why Study and Write Social Histories of Rhetoric?”
If we define social histories as the histories of everyday lives which haven’t been typically represented in mainstream histories, then I am assuming social histories of rhetoric(s) pertains to the use of rhetorical practices by communities and members of communities who haven’t been typically represented in [...]

Notes on Just Advocacy

Notes on Just Advocacy? Women’s Human Rights, Transnational Feminisms, and the Politics of Representation Edited by Wendy S. Hesford and Wendy Kozol
Introduction:
Visual rhetorics of rescue rely on now-familiar narrative dualism of tradition and modernity to champion human rights within the framework of Western liberation (1).
Domesticity reinforces national hierarchies in which the US [...]

Rough Notes on Transnational Feminism and Rhetoric

Definition of Transnational Feminism
Nayereh Tohidi http://www.history.ucla.edu/dubois/Transnational%20Feminism.html
Transnational feminism is directly connected to the processes of globalization. Socioeconomic and socio-demographic changes at both the local national and global levels contributed to the emergence of transnational feminism in the mid-1908s and early-1990s. Transnational feminism is the academic and theoretical dimension of this phenomena.
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The most important change at [...]