Rhetorical Touch - Disability, Identification, Haptics by Shannon Walters
At a Glance
Section titled âAt a Glanceâ| Metadata | Details |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 2018-01-01 |
| Journal | Advances in the History of Rhetoric |
| Authors | Lydia McDermott |
| Institutions | Whitman College |
Abstract
Section titled âAbstractâShannon Waltersâ Rhetorical Touch stretches the consideration of embodied rhetorics to embrace the sense of touch through both classical rhetoric and contemporary disability studies. Key to Waltersâ project is a rereading of Aristotleâs pisteisâlogos, pathos, and ethosâthrough the sense of touch. To examine the productions of a variety of disabled rhetors, she draws upon rhetoricians from Empedocles to Burke, on phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty, and on disability-studies scholars such as Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson and Brenda Brueggemann. This broad, disciplinary-crossing quality of her scholarship makes sense because she situates touch as âa sense that transcends bodily boundaries; it demands an approach that also transcends boundariesâ (8). Though her project is solidly within the realm of disability studies, it can and should affect how we do scholarship in rhetoric.Through an understanding of Empedoclesâ sense of logos, Walters argues that touch is the broadest means of persuasion, and, furthermore, that it is the sense that ties all humans together, those who are disabled as well as those who are temporarily able-bodied. In so doing, Walters calls for a radical repositioning of all rhetorical appeals as fundamentally rooted in the sense of touch. This is the most radical and fascinating claim of the book, and it holds up for both individual rhetors as well as amorphous rhetors who are harder to identify. Walters not only uses this understanding of rhetoric to guide examination of Helen Keller, Temple Grandin, and Nancy Mairs, but also in her examination of the birth of the Disability Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s through the 1977 demonstrations for the enforcement of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. At times, her broad historical and theoretical approach weaves together unevenly, but the overarching argumentâs contribution to reimagining pisteis is solid and perhaps even groundbreaking.The first chapter examines the tactile experience of Helen Kellerâs rhetorical productions through a careful consideration of her texts, the context in which they were produced, and the theoretical implications of her practice. A facet of this chapter that I found particularly relevant and insightful was Walterâs examination of the doubt of authenticity and individual authorship that accompanied all of Kellerâs writings. Walters reads the accusations of plagiarism against Keller as stemming directly from Kellerâs relationship to communication as tactile and inherently collaborative. Though Keller is an exceptional example of these facets of rhetorical production, we all draw on sources we have absorbed unknowingly, on collaboration with present and distant others, and on a tactile experience. Walters argues we thus must reshape rhetoric to account for this dynamic. To do so, she literally redraws the traditional rhetorical triangle into a doubled triangle, forming either a diamond with an entire side âtouching,â representing both traditional ethos and her reinterpretation through mĂȘtis, or an angular and precarious hourglass, intersecting at the point of two interpretations of logosâAristotleâs and Empedoclesâ.Chapter two examines the demonstrations by disability activists demanding enforcement of Section 504, simultaneously continuing Waltersâ theoretical underpinnings, which rest on an understanding of rhetorical identification largely dependent on Burke, but shaped through theories of touch by Merleau-Ponty, Nancy, and Deleuze. Walters identifies a key problem with rhetorical models of identification: they âdo not accommodate the identities of people with disabilities or identifications made possible by the lived experience of disabilityâ (62). Waltersâ retheorization seeks to accommodate identification: âSpecifically, identification via sensation and touch possesses the potential to reform and reshape the process of identificationâ (64). Walters suggests Deleuzeâs concept of the âfoldâ as a model of Burkean identification that includes division. Though I find this chapter fascinating and ambitious, Iâm left wondering why we must accommodate identification at all. This seems a retrofitting strategy and potentially less radical than an outright dismissal, or even a redefinition, as Walters does so well in her reimagining of pisteis.In the next three chapters, Walters molds the rhetorical triangle into something radically different from what our first-year composition textbooks taught us in order to be inclusive of touch and thus of disabled rhetors. Instead of Aristotleâs autonomous, rational logos, in chapter three, Walters puts forward Empedoclesâ felt sense of logos, which is touch-based and enables a facilitated model of rhetoric. She finds this extralinguistic approach to logos more appropriate for rhetors with psychological disabilities and suggests that, âEmpedoclesâ sense of logos, felt in the heart as much as exhibited by oneâs cognition, is physical, psychological, and embodiedâ (98). Walters then applies this reading of felt logos to online support forums for schizophrenia and depression, in which participants explicitly discuss touch and the lack of it in their lives. This reading is innovative, though perhaps limited in this online form.In the following chapter, Walters pushes her readers to reexamine how we presume an ethos that is neurotypical. She suggests, âSimply put, autistic people are seen as ethos-less when viewed through a narrowly medical or pathological lensâ (113). This pathological lens casts autists as unable to identify and connect with others and therefore unable to construct ethos. In this chapter, Walters is doing her most expansive work to develop lines of thought already established in considerations of disability and of bodily knowing within our discipline, such as those developed by Debra Hawhee and Jay Dolmage, who both look to mĂȘtis as an alternative knowledge production within rhetoric that is also based in bodily adaptation. Walters builds directly on this scholarship in order to suggest an approach to ethos that is neuro-diverse: âI redefine mĂȘtis as a tactile relationship of embodied cognition between people and their environments that supports a method of character formation not based on traditional notions of ability and neurotypicalityâ (118). In this chapter, Walters makes a significant contribution to disability rhetoric as a field by showing how mĂȘtis can accommodate those who use facilitated communication as well as those who are neuro-divergent and may use touch in nontypical ways to build trust and character.In the next chapter, Walters articulates how facility with kairos can make new forms of pathos possible: âI redefine kairos though special attention to the sense of touch, showing how kairos operates tactilely to create new emotional and physical connections among bodies in close proximity and contactâ (145). Walters uses the term âredefineâ in this chapter and the last in ways that may lead a reader to think she has no regard for rhetorical history. Quite to the contrary, Walters is changing perspective and illuminating a connection to touch that has always been related to the terms she is deploying. For instance, Walters notes that in the first uses of the term kairos, in Homer and Hesiod, the term is ânearly synonymous with âdisability,â indicating places of bodily vulnerability and impairment that are penetrable tactilelyâ (153). Here, Walters traces an etymology that classically may have worked to further disadvantage those who are impaired, but that in current rhetorical scholarship can call attention to the tactile and kairotic ways of employing pathos, which disabled rhetors, such as Nancy Mairs, Harriet McBryde Johnson, and John Hockenberry, have opened as rhetorical possibilities.Her final two chapters work to conclude her reexamination of rhetoric through the sense of touch. Chapter six explores the possibilities of teaching with haptic technologies. Far from an afterthought, this chapter remains deeply theoretical, engaged in historiography, and pulls together her shape-shifting pisteis within the classroom. Walters leads the reader as she leads her students through a critical investigation of haptic technologies, showing the ableist assumptions embedded within them. Not only is this investigation pertinent to disability studies, but it also models the kind of deep critical analysis we should all be guiding our students toward. Waltersâ conclusion reminds us that we are all embedded in haptic technologies and the future of communication technology will only embed us further. As we critically engage technology, we need a lens through which to understand touch, which Walters has provided.Rhetorical Touch is an important contribution to the historiography of rhetoric, to rhetorical theory, to disability studies, and to composition rhetoric. I look forward to seeing how other scholars take up this reshaping of the traditional rhetorical triangle. The only disappointment I can manage to find in the book is the continued adherence to identification. However, Walters provides analytical insight and new perspectives on the tradition that are radical and inclusive of diverse bodies and minds. That is what this book offers to the world of rhetoric.