Lyons begins his powerful essay “Rhetorical Sovereignty” with the profound claim that writing has played a major role in eradicating tribal identities and cultures and replacing them with the cultural values and beliefs of white civilization. Because of the “duplicitous interrelationships between writing, violence, and colonization during the nineteenth century,” a distrust of the written [...]
Posts Tagged as ‘Kennedy’
January 2, 2009
“Rhetorical Sovereignty” Scott Lyons
February 7, 2008
“Rhetoric from the Ruins of African Antiquity” Kermit Campbell
In “Rhetoric from the Ruins of African Antiquity,” Kermit Campbell challenges George Kennedy’s notion that traditional societies such as ancient and medieval African cultures reflected little on language use. Campbell claims that African rhetorical practices need to be based African historical records and cannot be categorized simply or easily judged as “non-literate.” Campbell also rejects [...]
February 7, 2008
George Kennedy “Comparative Rhetoric”
In Comparative Rhetoric, George Kennedy offers an evolutionary model of rhetoric, beginning with animals, moving in chronological time to “non-literate” cultures, or “societies without writing,” and ending with ancient ‘literate” societies, the apex of which is ancient Greece and Rome. Relying on histories largely constructed by white historians, in this part of his book, Kennedy [...]
