Write an analysis of the essay rhetorical situation
Read your selected nonfiction essay, and write an analysis of the essay’s “rhetorical situation.”, it should introduce your audience to:
? The essay’s author. Who is he/she? What are her credentials? How does he establish his ethos (credibility)?
? What is the author’s purpose in writing the essay? Is she trying to persuade an audience to take action? Inform? Raise awareness of an issue?
? The author’s audience & the context of the essay (Where was it published? When? Who reads this publication?)
? Find five examples of “risks” this author has taken. Quote five different sentences, and analyze each sentence. What is the author saying? Why is it risky? Is it risky content- could it likely make somebody angry, or worse- invite danger? Is it risky stylistically (think about Anzaldua’s piece). Does it make me upset, or feel uncomfortable? Agitated?
Process Work, WPII
Process Work: WPII
I first came across Rebecca Solnit’s writing in Harper’s, in an excellent long-form journalism piece about the history of big business in the United States. She is, as Jamie Kilstein writes in Salon, a “decorated author and activist” who has published fifteen books about art, culture, politics, history, and-as she insists on her website biography-hope. Her writing is investigatory, often plumbing the lesser-known characters
and events that she feels is worth exploration.
She has received multiple awards-including a National Book Circle Critics Award, and publishes regularly in esteemed magazines and newspapers. As one interviewer puts it, “Solnit’s emphasis has been on the political qualities of art and the environment, the artistic elements of nature and politics, and the meanderings of humans in and out of those combinations” (Believer). This is precisely what I admire about
Solnits work: her ability to analyze whatever her immediate subject is in terms of its impact on our world and the people in it.
Though she is a lauded writer in many circles (amongst poets and historians alike, for instance), if you hear Solnit’s name at a party, it is most likely about one particular article she published in 2008 for TomDispatch.com-“Men Explain Things To Me.” Tom Dispatch is an online publication that aims to “connect some of the global dots regularly left unconnected by the mainstream media and to offer a clearer sense of
how this imperial globe of ours actually works.” This is an ambitious goal, and Solnit’s widely-shared and controversial piece is an example of the kind of writing TomDispatch readers are looking for.
TomDispatch readers are people who are looking for an “antidote” to the kind of superficial stories we often get from mainstream news-a short columns about the number of recent Ebola cases, for instance, or an ill-informed TV “debate” about (all caps on the ticker) “MUSLIM EXTREMISM.” The audience of TomDispatch writes want to read writing that asks the harder questions-the kinds of questions that can make
us feel uncomfortable in our own skin, or questions that just make us plain angry or sad about the current state of affairs. It is an audience, its authors hope, that wants to be motivated to create positive change in their own communities.
Understanding her audience-and the fact that most of those people in 2008 were probably middleclass, liberal-leaning Americans-can help us understand some of the risks she took in her writing. It’s not risking that much to decry President Bush an “arrogant idiot” to a room of fuming Democrats, for instance (although say this to a room full of Texans, and you may have another thing coming).
But “Men Explain Things To Me” risks alienating a lot of reader-namely, a certain 50%. Because in “Men Explain Things To Me,” Solnit argues that women-every woman, on a daily basis-experience a particular kind of condescension from their male counterparts. Or, put another way: some men tend to talk with condescension toward women, a kind of condescension that she terms “Mainsplaining” and describes as “Being told that, categorically, he knows what he’s talking about and she doesn’t.”
Solnit is making this point not to make men feel ashamed, but to draw attention and to acknowledge that the phenomena happens. She is writing to help us connect the dots. It’s important, she writes, to recognize that “Mansplaining” happens on many different levels, because “credibility,” as she argues on page four, “is a basic survival tool.” What Solnit means arguing here is that women need to be taken seriously-in the office, in the classroom, in the courtroom-not just because it is crucial in the fight for women’s equal rights, but because being taken seriously is key to women’s safety.
At this point, I’d say that 50% of the TomDispatch audience-the guys-may start to feel uncomfortable. I can understand: they’re being told that something people of the same gender do has maintained an unsafe environment for people of the opposite gender, people they probably love. But Solnit takes care not to make this a personal attack. In fact, I’m a bit disheartened that many male readers feel the Process Work, WPII.
Need to be on the defense after reading this article. But I can recognize that simply admitting to having had this experience-and analyzing the experience of other women around the globe-can trigger so many defense mechanisms. This was certainly a risk Solnit knew she was taking.
As I prepare to write a more thorough analysis of “Men Explain Things To Me,” I am taking a closer look at the following “risks” Solnit takes-and how these risks help or hinder her argument.
*The risk of calling out particular men in her life to analyze the interaction. “So, Mr. Very Important was going on smugly about this book I should have known when Sallie interrupted him to say, ‘That’s her book.’ Or tried to interrupt him anyway.” A brave move, inviting possible criticism/social repercussions. But necessary: how can Solnit claim to know anything about the phenomena if she doesn’t pull from her own many experiences with it?
*The risk of alienating men-“explain things to me, and other women, whether or not they know what they’re talking about. Some men.” How much can that “Some men.” alleviate that claim? Is there another way Solnit could have qualified that remark, so that men are absolutely sure that this argument is not a personal indictment. That it, in fact, has nothing to do with them in particular as a person or as a man, but rather to do with social interactions that happen all the time. Here I might refer to her 2012 intro, as she does address it a little better there: ”
*Controversial language used to describe people, particularly politicians, and phenomena (“war,” for instance).
*The biggest risk I think Solnit takes in this issue is alluding to the harm this social phenomena of men explaining things can cause in cultures outside the US. Since that’s not the focus of this piece, she doesn’t spend a lot of time giving in-depth information-or multiple perspectives on the issue:
“More extreme versions of our situation exist in, for example, those Middle Eastern countries where women’s testimony has no legal standing; so that a woman can’t testify that she was raped without a male witness to counter the male rapist. Which there rarely is.” While I think the allusion is helpful to making her point, I would like to analyze the risk she took in making it-and consider what other choices she might have made. She might have talked more about the silencing of rape victims in the US, which happens in very real (if different ways).
*The risk to the patriarchy (it is has been decried as “dangerous” for women to have access to such “radical” thoughts). The piece inspired-though did not coin-the term “mansplaining,” which gives women very real ways to talk about their own experiences. IE: the article (and the article’s popularity) risks very real change.
