Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation

Given the force of colonial violence and the politics of erasure, I argue it is imperative to deeply address what Rhetorical Studies has inherited from academic predecessors and to uncover colonialism's enduring impacts on our field. I contend that much of Rhetorical Studies upholds a system of knowledge that overwhelmingly perpetuates erasure and effacement of Indigenous work and thus the political stakes of complicity in Indigenous erasure and anti-Blackness must be addressed. This account of Rhetorical Studies' dominant and embedded histories, narratives, and authors reveals how the discipline is still missing an intellectual genealogy that orients rhetorical scholarship toward indigeneity, which provides possibilities to challenge erasure. Even as settler colonialism receives more attention in Rhetoric, I suggest the necessity of a coarticulated frame that navigates Rhetorical Studies alongside direct intellectual engagement with Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) to build simultaneous attention to indigeneity and settler colonialism. This frame explains racialization and colonization must be addressed together while centering a focus on indigeneity as analytic. Launching this intellectual genealogy reveals contradictions, limitations, and complexities to hold Rhetorical Studies – to hold all of us – accountable for nurturing and building a world beyond colonialism in QJS and in our field.     

“What to do when you’re raped”: Indigenous women critiquing and coping through a rhetoric of survivance

ABSTRACT

Native women and girls suffer sexual violence at the highest rate of any demographic in the United States—primarily perpetrated by non-Native assailants. In this essay, we explore how dominant Euro-American discourses regarding trauma, sexual violence, and indigenous peoples complicate this epidemic. These discourses individualize trauma, assign it an unrealistic linear timeline that presupposes a stable subject position, and ignore the experiences of women of color. Such rhetoric renders Native bodies as disposable and disguises structural oppression by blaming women for the sexual violence committed against them. Ultimately, we argue that rhetoric of survivance, which combines survival, endurance, and resistance to assert Native presence over historical absence and perceived oblivion, creates a space in which communities disproportionately affected by violence can simultaneously practice collective coping methods while also challenging dominant discourses. To advance this argument we conduct a rhetorical analysis of the illustrated handbook, What to Do When You’re Raped: An ABC Handbook for Native Girls, which was produced by a Native American women’s organization to address sexual violence. We explore how four central characteristics of survivance—infinitive temporality, storytelling, collective agency, and structural critique—assert Native presence and make visible the problem of sexual violence against Native women.     

Speaking back to Manifest Destinies: a land education-based approach to critical curriculum inquiry

This article examines the ways in which settler colonialism shapes place in the social studies curriculum, producing understandings of land and citizenship in educational settings. To do this, the author uses the emergent framework of land education to move forward the important projects of place-based education, especially its potential for centering indigeneity and confronting educational forms of settler colonialism in environmental education. To emphasize how place-based education can intersect with land education, the author outlines how a concept of place, informed by Indigenous knowledge, renders settler colonialism visible. The author then describes how current models of place-based education differ from land education in a number of ways. Finally, using a land education approach, the author demonstrates how schooling, through social studies curriculum, transmits a settler colonial land ethic that must be made explicit in order to decolonize settler colonial relations attached to current pedagogical models of place. The author insists land education – like environmental education – must take place across the curriculum (k-16). However, land education implies a commitment to begin to understand the process of decolonization that takes seriously the centrality of settler colonialism.     

Aging,precarity, and the struggle for Indigenous elsewheres

Abstract

Through the structures and logics of the settler/capitalist state, the aging body can only be viewed as a crisis of decreased labor power and increased social expenditure; an amortization that has only worsened under neoliberalism. As such, this article calls attention to the conspicuous absence of a counter discourse and politics of aging within Native American and Indigenous studies. Within Indigenous communities, elders have always held places of distinction, which not only renders the dearth of theories of aging within Native studies problematic but also deeply limiting to the project of articulating the “decolonial option”. As discussed in the article, Indigenous theories of aging are a critical component of securing alter-Native existences, defined by relations of mutuality, responsibility and reciprocity.     

Native Resistive Rhetoric and the Decolonization of American Indian Removal Discourse

This essay examines nineteenth-century Native resistance to the American Indian removal policy as a strategy of decolonization. Attention focuses in particular on the tactics of decolonization employed in the rhetoric of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole nations as it functioned to expose the dilemmas and hypocrisies of U.S. government justifications for Native removal as animated by discourses of territoriality, republicanism, paternalism, and godly authority. This analysis of the rhetorical strategy and tactics of decolonization helps to reassess the agency of nineteenth-century American Native voices and to gauge in general how rhetorics of resistance can be articulated in colonial contexts.     

The Empire of outrage: Topical systems at the death of Cecil the lion

ABSTRACT

This article employs the topographical metaphors of terrain and territory to examine how, upon the 2015 death of Cecil the lion at the hands of the dentist Walter Palmer, outrage was channeled into and captured by digital topoi. Digital rhetoric is organized into a topical system that is topographical, composed of not just “places” but “levels” that organize and orient rhetorical expressions into particular topoi. Users “navigate” and “move” through the channels of the digital topical system, and in the process arrive at or pass by topoi. I further argue that the digital topical system is composed of the terrain of digital spaces and the territory of global capitalism. The terrain of digital spaces shapes digital rhetoric through material affordances, cultural conventions, and the power of institutional logics. Digital rhetoric is further shaped by the macro-level territorial accretions of political and economic power in Empire. By mapping the topoi present in the case of Cecil the lion’s death, I show how scholars can better understand and articulate the ways that power ossifies into a digital topical system that shapes contemporary discourses.     

Settler Traditions of Place: Making Explicit the Epistemological Legacy of White Supremacy and Settler Colonialism for Place-Based Education

With the rise of place-based models of education, credence needs to be given to epistemological traditions that curate individual understandings of and relations to the social world (i.e., places). The epistemological traditions that have been shared across generations of North American settler colonialists are at the center of this article. The dominant epistemology of settler society provides racialized, anthropocentric, and capitalistic understandings of places. Relations to place are cultivated through particular conceptions of nature, private property, and personhood, which remain at the epistemic foundation of Western society. These conceptions are concomitant to modes of domination like white supremacy and settler colonialism, and ultimately constitute an ideal white male settler actor. This article suggests that place-based education carries the potential to offer epistemic resistance to domination, but first needs to engage in a more comprehensive understanding of settler traditions of place.     

Decolonising religious education in sub-Saharan Africa through the prism of anticolonialism: a conceptual proposition

ABSTRACT

Through the lens of an anticolonial (as opposed to postcolonial) analytical framework, this conceptual paper examines decolonising efforts (and failures) in Religious Education (RE) as a school subject in post-independent sub-Saharan Africa. It critiques the missionary/European epistemological hegemony that continues to render RE a colonial rather than a postcolonial project. Beyond rhetoric of the impact of colonialism, the paper laments the perversity of a ‘colonial caged mentality’ affecting the conceptualisation of RE in what is supposed to be a postcolonial milieu in which Africans should design school curricula that suit their particular needs. It calls for the re-conceptualisation of RE de-linked from colonial/Eurocentric thought patterns and presents an ‘envisioned’ decolonised RE (post-confessional, inclusive and multi-faith) that speaks to the political and socio-cultural reality of a postcolonial environment in sub-Saharan Africa. The argument in this paper is that sub-Saharan Africa should yearn for a paradigm shift not only to ensure the decolonisation of the RE curriculum, but also crucially to challenge embedded colonial residues inherent in stakeholders ‘manning the gates’ ensuring that decolonised RE is supported and implemented effectively in the curriculum and schools.     

Building a space to dream: Supporting indigenous children's survivance through community-engaged social and emotional learning

Indigenous communities practice survivance and challenge social and political systems to support their children's identity and well-being. Grounded in transformative social-emotional learning (SEL) and tribal critical race theory, this 3-year community-based participatory research study (2019–2021) examined how a SEL program co-created with an Indigenous community in Flathead Nation in Montana supports anti-racism and anti-colonialism among Indigenous children. Critical reflexivity and thematic analyses of Community Advisory Board meetings and journals written by 60 students (M_age = 10.3, SD = 1.45; 47% girls; 60% Native American) during the SEL program revealed themes on Indigenous identity, belonging, wellness, and colonialism. These results shed light on challenging the racist and colonial roots of education to support Indigenous children's survivance and social-emotional well-being.     

‘Nature’ in German colonial literature for children and young people

ABSTRACT

German colonialism has long been treated as a sort of footnote in the epoch of the Empire due to its relatively short time span. The focus was mostly on the reconstruction of a story of ‘white’ men – as the story of pioneers, ‘discoverers’, missionaries or traders. But how were children included in the colonial project? This article deals with this question with regard to the genre of colonial literature for children that emerged in the German Empire. Due to their pedagogic impetus these novels are of significance for historical educational research: they were explicitly put in the service of instruction to inspire children with the meaning of colonial issues. Within these novels ‘nature’ had high priority. On the basis of selected colonial novels for boys and girls, this article investigates the question of what was understood by ‘nature’ and of its importance for colonial education.     

A colonial history of the higher education present: rethinking land-grant institutions through processes of accumulation and relations of conquest

ABSTRACT

This conceptual paper examines the colonial conditions of possibility for a formative moment of US public higher education, the Morrill Act of 1862, and considers how these conditions continue to shape the present. The federal government’s accumulation of Indigenous lands in the nineteenth century helped provide the material base for land-grant legislation, and although conquest of the frontier was eventually metaphorized in higher education discourse, public institutions remain both dependent on and vulnerable to the imperatives of accumulation that were established during colonization, as is evident in contemporary privatization efforts. I argue that if efforts to resist privatization fail to address how colonialism has historically shaped US public goods, then these efforts risk re-naturalizing the imperative of capital accumulation and relations of conquest.     

Towards a postcolonial politics of appearance: unsettling lifelong learning as a racial contract

ABSTRACT

In the context of flexible capitalism, lifelong learning has been posed as a pathway for individuals to accumulate skills and actualise potentials. What is overlooked, however, is that the process of accumulation and actualisation is embedded within the culture of recognition. People who are historically constructed as the anthropos, a legacy of the colonial history struggle to appear as equals vis-à-vis the gaze of the humantias. With this critique in view, I reviewed the field of immigrant and lifelong learning in relation to a postcolonial politics of appearance. I sought to understand how lifelong learning settles itself in immigrant consciousness, and how it shapes immigrant experiences in the West. My review points to three metaphors that speak of the challenges and possibilities for immigrants to appear: fixation of the Eurocentric gaze, re-credentialing as precarious investment, and lifelong learning as trans/formation. Together, these metaphors suggest that lifelong learning has conjured a racial contract, which ironically binds immigrants to the labour of learning and yet continuously suppresses their appearance. To unsettle this racial contract, borders need to be reimagined and crossed/vexed by recentring immigrants as knowing subjects.     

Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala's Primer Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno and the Practice of Rhetorical Theory in Colonial Peru

This essay takes up Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala's Primer Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno as an artifact of early colonial Peruvian rhetoric and an evocative example of American rhetorical theory. Our analysis illuminates how Guaman Poma theorizes transcultural colonial communication from an Andean perspective. We highlight three key elements in his theory: its ethical copia, its concern with the insufficiency of the available genres, and its assumption that communication will fail. In the end, we suggest, Guaman Poma provides a generative, if incomplete, theory that helps account for the complexities of colonial rhetorical practice.     

Towards ‘refiguring presences’ as an anti-colonial orientation to research in early childhood studies

In this paper, I craft a methodological orientation for attending to the intricacies of everyday place encounters in early childhood settings with particular attention to settler colonialism and more-than-human entanglements. Drawing from my work with children and educators in childcare settings located in what is now British Columbia, Canada, I use refiguring presences to describe this research methodology, and its particular attention to unsettling everyday place relations in early childhood pedagogies within the context of settler colonialism. I situate refiguring presences in everyday material-discursive impacts in an effort to open up the potentialities and boundaries of political engagement in early childhood studies. I experiment with refiguring presences in relation to what I see as its most important elements. These elements include attending to colonialisms in everyday encounters, restorying contested places, foregrounding more-than-human relationalities and (dis)entangling researcher subjectivities.     

Land education: Indigenous,post-colonial,and decolonizing perspectives on place and environmental education research

This editorial introduces a special issue of Environmental Education Research titled ‘Land education: Indigenous, post-colonial, and decolonizing perspectives on place and environmental education research.’ The editorial begins with an overview of each of the nine articles in the issue and their contributions to land and environmental education, before outlining features of land education in more detail. ‘Key considerations’ of land education are discussed, including: Land and settler colonialism, Land and Indigenous cosmologies, Land and Indigenous agency and resistance, and The significance of naming. The editorial engages the question ‘Why land education?’ by drawing distinctions between land education and current forms of place-based education. It closes with a discussion of modes and methods of land education research.     

Naming beyond the white settler colonial gaze in educational research

In this article, I describe the ways educational research often calls us out our names, meaning that educational researchers often name communities not as they are but as the academy needs them to be along damaging logics of erasure and deficiency. I use Morrison’s concept of the White gaze, Tuck’s concepts of damage-centered and desire-based research, and other contemporary scholarship on settler colonialism, White supremacy, and education to offer ways of naming in educational research beyond the White settler gaze. Finally, I look to hashtag naming in current social movements (e.g. #BlackLivesMatter, #DearNativeYouth #NotYourModelMinority) to imagine educational research that understands the naming of the communities of our work as informed by movement speech, the sort of naming that can save lives and show us and others who we are and desire to be.     

Decoloniality as inversion: decentring the west in emancipatory theory and pedagogy

ABSTRACT

This study starts from contemporary scholarship in decolonial theory as well as from the seventeenth century political thinker Guaman Poma de Ayala, whose critique of colonial society in Peru enacted an epistemological displacement of colonial authority in its own method and perspective. On this theoretical basis, and by means of a contrast with the accumulative drive that has partly characterised both capitalism and Western critical theory, I argue that interrogating the Eurocentric architecture of emancipatory praxis from a decolonial standpoint necessarily involves a project of inversion that disrupts modernity’s developmentalist imaginary, and that restores historical agency to the marginalised while exposing the corruption of power’s supposed virtue. Extrapolating from Guaman Poma and contemporary theorists of decolonisation, the paper argues that rather than a dialectical process of progression, emancipatory theory and practice must be thought of first of all as a process of unwinding, in which the catastrophe of colonialism is reckoned with and what has been taken is restored. In education, both on the terrain of curriculum proper as well as in the process of subject formation in schools, this means a radical reconstitution of the values underwriting canon, rationality, and ways of being – as they are lived within the school and in its relationship to the communities around it.     

(Re)Bordering the Civic Imaginary: Rhetoric,Hybridity, and Citizenship in La Gran Marcha

Though the drive to limit US citizenship often takes shape through the symbolic and material exclusion of “aliens,” immigrants also engage in rhetorical struggles over the limits of the US civic imaginary. This essay examines one such challenge to the bordering logics of US citizenship—La Gran Marcha, one of the largest immigration protests of 2006. Rather than see the protest as wholly “alien,” as it was conceived of by anti-immigrant forces, or as purely “American,” as an attempt for mere recognition, La Gran Marcha can best be understood as performing a hybrid US citizenship. This hybrid rhetoric problematizes contemporary understandings of citizenship and elucidates immigrants' agency within US democracy.     

“Whores” and “Hottentots”: Protection of (white) women and white supremacy in anti-suffrage rhetoric

ABSTRACT

Through an analysis of anti-suffrage arguments, I identify white supremacist tropes as an important strand in woman suffrage debates. I argue that sexualization and themes of home were signals to racial bias, and American womanhood was used as a rhetorical resource in struggles over race and national identity. As we celebrate the centennial of woman suffrage, it is vital to recognize how debates over women in national space participate in white supremacist logics.