Truth, Lies, And Deception
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National Council of Teachers of English is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to College English.
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Truth, Lies, and Method: Revisiting Feminist HistoriographyAuthor(s): Cheryl GlennSource: College English, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Jan., 2000), pp. 387-389Published by: National Council of Teachers of EnglishStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/378937Accessed: 09-02-2016 13:09 UTC
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8/17/2019 Truth, Lies, And Deception
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387
COMMENT:
T r u t h L i e s
n d
M e th o d
evis it ing
F e m in i s t
Historiography
Cheryl
Glenn
I
ollegeEnglish
has invited me to comment on Xin Liu Gale'sreviewof
my
fem-
inist
historiographic study
of
Aspasia
of Miletus.
Gale reiterates her
1997
Intersectionsof
Feminism(s)
and
Rhetorics(s)
Conference
polemic
by
reaf-
firming
a
set
of
unquestioned
privileges
referred
to,
with
numbing
regularity,
as
tradition and
truth. Thus her
approach
takes the
reactionary
criticism
dujour
that
associates much
postmodern
thought
with the end of
truth and the
decline
of
standards
and reduces
it into a
simple
binary:
on
the one
hand,
there is
traditional
objective
historiography,
and,
on the
other,
subjective
feminist
fictionalization.
What
is
missing
is
the
recognition
that
postmodern
historiography
does not
attempt
to do
awaywith the notion of truth; instead, it attemptsto think of truth outside the con-
fines of
a
mythical
objectivity,
or,
at the
very
least,
to
decouple
the link
between
objectivity
and truth.
Ignoring
historiography's
mbrication
with
truth,
power,
and
ethics
results
in
a
reading
of
Susan
Jarratt,
Rory Ong,
and me
(and
presumably
many
others)
only
as
adversaries,
enemies of
tradition,
obstructionists of
the
Truth.
In
spite
of
these
difficulties,
the
discussion
offers several
instructive
points:
(1)
a
focus
on
Aspasia,
a
figure
who
deserves more
scholarly
attention;
(2)
a
thorough
min-
ing
of the
historical,
literary,
social,
and
political
research
n
my
own
discursivefoot-
notes;
(3)
a
comparison
of the
purposefully
different
methodologies
among
various
academic fields
(i.e., rhetoric, composition,
and
classics);and,
most of
all, (4)
a re-
articulation of
the tension
between
history
and
history
writing,
between
notions
of
Ch er
y
I
GIe n n
is
Associate Professor of
English
at Penn
State.
Founding
board
member and
immediate
past president
of
the
Coalition of
Women
Scholars in
the
History
of
Rhetoric
and
Composition,
Glenn is
the
author of
Rhetoric
Retold:
Regendering
he
Tradition
rom
Antiquity
through
he
Renaissance,
hich
won
best
book/honorable
mention
by
the
Society
for
the
Study
of
Early
Modem
Women;
the St.
Martin's
Guide
o
Teaching
Writing;
and TheSt.
Martin's
Reader
(forthcoming).
Her
historiographic
work
has
earned
her two
NEH
fellowships
and
the
Conference on
College Composition
and
Communication
Richard
Braddock
Award.
She
recently
initiated a
new
series for
Southern Illinois
University
Press,
Studies
in
Rhetorics and
Feminisms,
and is
currently
working
on
Unspoken:
Rhetoric
ofSilence.
College
English,
Volume
62,
Number
3,
January
2000
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8/17/2019 Truth, Lies, And Deception
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388
College
English
truth
and method
that
I
rehearsed
throughout
Rhetoric
Retold:
Regendering
he Tradi-
tion
fromAntiquityThrough
heRenaissance. am
limiting my
comments to that
fourth
point
so
that
I can
revisit the
fruitful and
necessary
tension
between
history
and
his-
tory writing,
a tension
that scholars have been
grappling
with
for decades
as
they
read,
reread,
write,
and
rewrite
histories of various
discourses and
practices.
Those of
us who
write
histories of
rhetoric,
especially
those of
us who
write
women into
those
histories,
do so
in
response
to intellectual
and ethical
questions
(of
evidence,
power,
and
politics)
at
the same time that
we resist received
notions
of both
history
and
writing
history.
Speaking
only
for
myself, my goal
has not been to
sup-
plant
the master
narrative
of
rhetorical
history
with a mater
narrative,
hough
such
a
move has
long
been
considered
the
paradox
of
some feminist
scholarship.
Rather,
my goal has been to investigate a number of deeply contextualized narratives n an
attempt
to
bring
a
fuller,
richer-different-picture
into
focus.
But
regardless
of
my goal,
process,
or
product,
I,
like
every
other
historiogra-
pher,
face the
task of
connecting
the
real
with discourse
on the
real. As
Michel
de
Certeau tells
us,
at the
point
where this
link
cannot
be
imagined,
historiography
must
nevertheless
work
as
if
the real
and discourse
were
actually
being
joined
(xxvii).
Every
history
writer
faces
this
missing
link.
Thus,
the text
of
history
writing
initi-
ates
a
play
between
the
object
under
study
and the
discourse
performing
the
analy-
sis.
And
even
the
most
conscientious,
traditional
however
that
word
resonates),
and conservative history writer plays this game. Collapsing any binary of history
and
fiction,
Hayden
White
explains
the historical
as
narrative,
as
representation,
and
as
interpretation
(51).
Nancy
F.
Partner
describes
history
as
the
definitive
human
audacity
imposed
on
formless
time and
meaningless
event
with
the
human
meaning-maker:
language.
She calls
history
writing
the silent
shared
conspiracy
of
all
historians
(who
otherwise
agree
on
nothing
these
days),
who talk about
the
past
as
though
it
were
really
'there'
(97).
Consequently,
all historical
accounts,
even the
most
seemingly
objective
historical
records,
are stories.
And even
these
stories
are
selected
and
arranged
according
to the selector's
frame of
reference,
an
idea
I'm not
sure
I
fully
appreciated
until
I read this
rendering
of
my
own
logic,
method,
and
representation.
Why,
then,
should
we continue
to write histories
(of
rhetoric,
or
of
anything
else)
when both
writing
and
history
are
suspect?
when
the
past
was
not
really
there ?
when
we
agree
that there
was a
past
but
not what
the
past
really
was?
Well,
historiographic
practices
are
so
firmly
situated
in
the
postmodern
critique
of
rhetoric
that
many
of us
already
ake
for
granted
that
histories
do
(or
should
do)
something,
that
they
fulfill
our
needs
at a
particular
ime and
place,
and that
they
never and
have
never reflected
a
neutral
reality.
In
choosing
what
to
show,
how
to
represent
it,
and
whom
to
spotlight,
all these
maps
subtly
shape
our
perceptions
of a
rhetoric
englobed.
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COMMENT:
Truth, Lies,
and
Method
389
That
is
not to
say,
however,
that all stories are created
equal,
that all histories
should or could be
equal.Historiography's
central
question
is not true or false.
Instead,
historiography
asks
us
to
consider
questions
of
knowledge
(in
what context
is
it
produced
and normalized?
whom does it
benefit?),
ethics
(to
what/whom are
these
practices
accountable?
what/whom do
they privilege?),
and
power
(what
prac-
tices
might
produce
historical
remembrances?
what are the effects of such
represen-
tation?).
At the nexus of these
questions
reside issues of
historical evidence: What
counts?
What is available?Who
provided
and
preserved
it-and
why?
How
and
to
what end has it been used? and
by
whom? Thus
history
is not
frozen,
not
merely
the
past.
It
provides
an
approachable,disruptableground
for
engaging
and
transforming
traditional
memory
or
practice
in
the interest
of both the
present
and the future.
Writing women (or any other traditionallydisenfranchisedgroup)into the his-
tory
of
rhetoric, then,
can
be an
ethically
and
intellectually responsible
gesture
that
disrupts
those frozen memories
in
order to address
silences,
challenge
absences,
and
assert women's contributions
to
public
life. Such a
gesture, particularly
one that
interrogates
the
availability,
practice,
and
preservation
(or destruction)
of historical
evidence,
simultaneously
exposes
relations of
exploitation,
domination,
censorship,
and erasure.
This
ethical
practice
not
only
accepts
the
possible
insufficiency
of
one's
understanding
of
history
and
implies
an
openness
and
reflexivity
in
one's
encounters,
but it
may
also
initiate a
restructuring
of
one's
understanding
of the
interrelation among the past, present and future; establishing possibilities for the
alteration of
one's
priorities,
evaluations,
and actions
(Simon 177).
Learning
to write new
histories,
histories
worthy
of the remarkablerevival of
rhetorical
consciousness,
means
embracing
new
opportunities
for
interrogating,
testing,
and
unfolding
the rhetorical
scholarship
that
has
come before so
that
we
might
advance our
re/thinking, re/assessing,
and
re/writing
of
rhetorical histories
and
futures,
theories and
practices.
Whether
they
result
in
advances
or
setbacks,
these risks
invigorate
our
field,
signify
our
progress,
and illuminate
possibilities.
But
they
will
not
always
be
understood,
let alone welcome.
WORKS
CITED
Certeau,
Michel de. The
Writing
ofHistory.
1975.
Trans. Tom
Conley.
New York:
Columbia
UP,
1988.
Glenn,
Cheryl.
Rhetoric
Retold:
Regendering
he
Tradition
from
Antiquity
Through
he
Renaissance. arbon-
dale:
Southern Illinois
UP,
1997.
Partner,
Nancy
E
Making
Up
Lost Time:
Writing
on the
Writing
of
History.
Speculum
61
(1986):
90-117.
Simon,
Roger
I.
Pedagogy
and
the Call to
Witness
in
Marc
Chagall's
White
Crucifixion
Education/Ped-
agogy/Cultural
tudies19.2-3
(1997):
169-92.
White,
Hayden.
Tropics
f
Discourse.
Baltimore:
Johns
Hopkins
UP,
1978.
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