This week’s readings felt like a WGS 200 unit rolled up into a few days, which I don’t mind at all because concepts relating to bodies can get quite complex, especially when discussing the intersectionality of the body in terms of gender, sex, (dis)ability, and tying in earlier discussions on race, culture, and ethnicity. A lot can be pinpointed with bodies, especially when all of these facets of oneself can become so politicized. In terms of (dis)ability, the “Disability” article points to this, and I’ve read of this in the past, is that everyone is temporarily able-bodied, yet infrastructure is set up to cater to these bodies. I love that disability scholars have begun to address “the importance of reclaiming individual bodily experience through art, performance, and literature” (Kochhar-Lindgren 84). My reasoning is because it reminds me of an article I read for WGS 200 that showcases this through the study of billboards. The article is by Alsion Kafer and it’s titled “A future for Whom?: Passing on Billboard Liberation.” This article talks about these billboards that were done by the Foundation for a Better Life (FBL) and the organization made advertisements to showcase what they believed to encompass a “better” life. For instance, Christopher Reeve, an actor who played Superman who then became a quadriplegic, was on one of the fifty-eight billboards, and it stated he was still a super man. Each of these billboards made disability seem like it was a problem people had to overcome and could only be done through individual character strength. I highly recommend the article because each example plays into the idea that there are no billboards to depoliticize disability or have a message to promote social change so people of non-heteronormative identities can be included. FBL claimed what they were advertising had nothing to do with political issues but character issues...and that’s still terrible because the billboards then truly do treat disability like a character flaw that has to be overcome to fit into the “norm.” This concept fits with all of the discussion in the Keywords articles because sex, gender, the body, can all get politicized and concepts that don’t fit into normative standards are when politicization comes into play.
I found it most helpful that Prelli’s introduction in “Rhetorics of Display” tied all of the ideas from the various Keywords articles to how bodies can be rhetorical in the sense that the display--the performance tied to bodies can be seen as rhetorical phenomenon, which makes sense considering what we all accomplished in the second project and what we may tie into the third project. Prelli opens by stating display has three main commonplace associations including (1) “how things look and appear” (2) “exhibition or demonstration” (3) showiness or ostentation (Prelli 1). Truthfully, studying rhetoric in terms of English always made me associate rhetoric with words, so to read that rhetoric is associated with appearances is a nuance I hadn’t thought about in-depth. When Prelli pointed to Aristotle’s oratory studies, that’s why I forever have associated Rhetoric with written and oral functions, even more so when I’ve thought about public speaking engagements I have participated in. I think the three commonplace points can apply to appearance and the appearance of words, and that means there’s probably more to appearances than I’ve realized. It’s true that rhetoric in terms of words can correlate with this idea of how they appear, especially in terms of tone and structure, so to apply this to literal appearances does raise some questions. Clearly, appearance can reveal assumptions about one’s identity, but in actuality, the rhetoric of seeing can only truly be assumption-based since one can only fully understand someone through a mutual understanding. I would like to note I did not state language because I truly believe people can understand one another despite the concept of language barriers. Furthermore, Prelli states appearance can also “highlight” the human experience, and to connect this to the concept of intersectionality and the body, I think this all means body, gender, sex, and (dis)ability influences our standpoints.
Comments