For this week’s blog post, I wanted to focus on the ideas of Nina Lozano-Reich and Dana Cloud. In their article titled The Uncivil Tongue: Invitational Rhetoric and the Problem of Inequality, they make a counterargument against other experts in the field about the meaning of invitation. From my understanding, the authors argue that invitational rhetoric often leads to oppressive discourses (NLR, DC 220). While other experts state that rhetorical invitation is a concept that works consistently, Lozan- Reich and Cloud disagree. They say that economic, political, and social equality are factors that make the invitational counterproductive and dangerous (NLR, DC 221). More specifically, the inequality associated with the above factors. The authors go on to give real-world examples of negative invitational dialogues. The examples focus on invitations concerning marginalized groups. Lozano-Reich and Cloud point out how damaging rhetorical invitation leads to oppressed groups “disabled” and coerced into unethical discourse( NLR, DC 222). Their article heavily focuses on equality and its importance. The authors believe that there is a need almost to be an equal playing field for there to be positive invitational rhetoric.
One topic mentioned by the authors was the idea of “invitation only” and how exclusion has been used against the oppressed in invitational discourse(NLR, DC 222). This idea reminded me of the 1885 Berlin Conference. The goal of this conference was to split up Africa for the European and Western nations on their quest for imperialism. With this severe change, the communities and nations within Africa had no say. African countries were not even invited. I think the Berlin Conference exemplifies the ideas of exclusion and inequality within invitational rhetoric. The conference also shows how economic, social, and political inequality factors can hinder the use of invitational rhetoric. Another real-world example that is almost the same as the Berlin Conference was the Big-Three conference after WW2. They did the same thing as the Berlin Conference, just under different circumstances.
I am left with a few questions. Maybe some of my peers could tackle these. First, I am curious about when it is appropriate (if appropriate at all) to engage in invitational rhetoric. I am also interested if my peers agree with the statements of this article.
Hello! I like the approach you took this week on the content. I think it is very interesting to think of the invitational rhetoric as an oppressive force. In general I think of it as rather an opeing to conversation on an equal platform. You mentioned Lozan-Reich and Cloud say that economic, political, and social equality make invitational dangerous and I think this is an interesting thing to note. The invention of the invitational rhetoric was to disallow these factors to play a role in the conversation, so while the theory accomplishes the avoidance of allowing those things to affect the conversation, this characteristic isn't necessarily a good one. While an even playing field is ideal the world does not exist within a vacuum and thus inequalities will still exist. Worse than these inequalities existing is that lack of allowance for them. If there isn't proper understanding, appreciation, and respect for differences people will not be informed enough about the conversation at hand.
ReplyDeleteI would like to try to answer some of your questions posed. I think there is a time and place for invitational rhetoric. I think the concept is sound but it is hard to apply in a way that is constructive. If people's identities are silenced than the conversation will be stunted, however if everyone is on a completely different page than no healthy discourse can truly occur. I think people need to recognize the difference such as socioeconomic and political ideologies, but they also need to be used only to aide the conversation, not to act as boundaries in which people must remain.