A Rhetorical Analysis of "becoming undisciplined: a zine"

2022.01.29

I spent much time this week reflecting on the reading entitled “becoming undisciplined: a zine” by the becoming undisciplined collective. Quite frankly, I could not get it out of my head. I had a tough time with it.

Before I begin something of a sustained reflective analysis of the reading, I am going to caveat everything I am about to say by explicitly stating that I do not think of this “zine” as a monolithic “reading” or even a cohesive whole. Unlike the other readings we have looked at thus far in MAIS 601, “becoming undisciplined” is a diverse collection of short, independent works written in multiple genres ranging from poetry to academic treatise to self-declared polemic. So, while I will sometimes speak of “the reading” or “the work,” I do so reluctantly because two of its most obvious features are its eclectic nature and multiple aims.

I want to use this reflective analysis to do something that the authors in the becoming undisciplined collective might disapprove of, namely, attempt a traditional rhetorical analysis of their zine, especially its introduction. I use the word “rhetorical” not in the pejorative sense, but rather in the most original sense of “rhetoric”: a systematic attempt to convince others of the truth. I consider such an analysis of “becoming undisciplined” to be a worthwhile exercise for three reasons. First, it is a rhetorically powerful document. Second, the zine attempts to use, in its own unique way, traditional rhetorical devices to understand, explain, and propose solutions to the many problems and barriers faced by members of historically marginalized groups when they attempt to join the higher echelons of academia. Finally, I believe the zine contains truths that are worth communicating to others. For these reasons, I will use three classical rhetorical concepts – kairos, stasis, and pisteis – as lenses through which to view the persuasive approach taken in “becoming undisciplined: a zine.”

Put as simply as possible, kairos means “occasion for rhetoric.” It is a Greek word that the ancient theorists used to refer to a time or situation that triggered a need for persuasive argument. In many cases, the kairos was obvious, such as in a court case. In a legal setting, the reason the collective is gathered and the point at issue to be debated is almost certainly understood. However, the kairos is not always so obvious, as in a policy debate before a political assembly. In that setting, it is possible members of the group are do not share the same understanding of why the collective is debating. Because it is often the first task of persuasion to identify why the parties are debating, the classical theorists of rhetoric felt it was important to identify and declare the kairos before a debate commenced. In their introduction, the becoming undisciplined collective open with a compelling kairos: “This project emerged as a conversation between friends. Struck by Christina Sharpe’s call to become undisciplined, we wanted to learn from the genealogy of Black radical thinkers who have long described the ways that oppressive social arrangements are a problem of knowledge itself” (1).

These opening sentences make three important rhetorical moves. The first sentence informs the reader that what they are about to embark on is not a traditional piece of academic writing. It is a project that “emerged as a conversation between friends.” Such a project has its own appeal, and a tone that is different from the typically stale, boring prose of a scholarly paper. But then the next sentence cites an academic authority, a scholarly move drilled into students from high school. The authors are thus walking a tightrope right from the opening words. That perilous position speaks to the tension the authors (and probably most readers) feel between having to speak in one’s own voice but also trying to be heard by the ivory tower. Finally, comes the specific articulation of the reason for the ensuing piece of rhetoric: “oppressive social arrangements are a problem of knowledge itself.” My intention is not to analyze whether this kairos is true – though I am inclined to think that it is – but to highlight that it is a damn good one. This is an issue that readers should be willing to consider and the becoming undisciplined collective have raised it in a way that Aristotle and Cicero would have considered a masterpiece of rhetorical technique.

Whereas kairos is the identification of the circumstances that generated the need for debate, in this case the circumstances of oppressive social arrangements, stasis is a strategy for determining what exactly the point at issue is in the debate. (Note: the Greek rhetoricians said “stasis” while the Romans called it “status.” I will stick with “stasis” just because it has a technical ring to it that “status” does not have an as English word.) To take a contemporary example, the COVID-19 pandemic has generated lots of public debate. As I type, protestors are marching outside my window engaging in that debate. However, they do not have a stasis as far as I can tell. They are debating public health measures in a general way, but they lack a decisive proposition that an audience can judge. The pros and cons of lockdowns or the level trust that the public should commit to vaccines with minimal long-term research are specific propositions to which an audience can assent or dissent. Identifying the nature and type of those specific propositions is required in order to make sure that all parties to the debate are in fact discussing the same problem. For the classical theorists, stasis was a method of exploring the point at issue to determine if it was a matter of fact, value, or definition. Unfortunately for the persuasive appeal of “becoming undisciplined,” the authors are not very clear on what their stasis is. However, I think one can be inferred.

There appears to be an unstated premise that the “problem of knowledge itself” that leads to oppressive social arrangements is a problem to do with the way knowledge is produced and disseminated by the universities, especially at the graduate level of learning. If that is the stasis of the becoming undisciplined collective, once again it is a compelling one. I would classify it as a matter of fact, and not of value or definition, though I recognize others might disagree. I wish the document and its subsidiary writings were clearer on this issue because it strikes me as a stasis that desperately needs to be debated.

The last classical rhetorical lens through which I would like to view the zine is pisteis, or “appeal.” To Aristotle, every piece of communication had three essential components: a sender, a receiver, and a message. And there are therefore three corresponding persuasive appeals: ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos refers to the character or ethical appeal of the sender; pathos to the emotions and interests of the receiver; and logos to the logic or convincing qualities of the message itself. To Aristotle and the theorists who came after him, each piece of rhetoric needed to strike a correct balance between these three appeals to be effective. While there are individual sections of “becoming undisciplined” that do strike such a balance, on the whole the zine is rhetorically unbalanced. In the introduction, the authors dismiss logos as an ideological tool when they “emphasize the theorizing that occurs in ‘forms quite different from the Western form of abstract logic’” (2), preferring instead to theorize in narrative forms such as riddles and proverbs that “unmask the power relations” (ibid) of the world.

Also concerning is the following sentence: “We recognize that the language we are often encouraged to use as graduate students is not always adequate for these expressions, and we have sought to create an avenue that validates and values ways of communicating that are not shaped by the need to be legible in or to the academy, with the wish that such a refusal of intelligeibility [sic] might make relationality more possible” (ibid). If, as I said earlier, the authors’ stasis is the claim that knowledge production in the university system leads to oppressive social arrangements, adopting a manner of communicating that intentionally seeks to sever any form of intelligible communication with those universities seems to be rhetorically self-defeating. It is effectively to declare that the only audience the becoming undisciplined collective seeks to reach are those who already agree with them. That is a kind of pathos, but not the kind that will change the minds of those who can end the oppressive social conditions the collective is trying to reform. There are individual entries in the zine that take a completely different approach than this introductory sentence, my favourite being “Misbehaving to Make Space” in which author Lauren Williams seeks to call attention to “the myth of educational neutrality” (14). However, because those articles expose the internal contraries within the zine as a whole, the rhetorical force of the total package is reduced. From a classical rhetorical framework, this is a self-inflicted wound on a piece of persuasion that diminishes the social change it can affect.

In the beginning of this reflection, I said I intended to do something the authors of the becoming undisciplined collective would likely disapprove of, namely, use one of the most basic tools of the Western tradition – rhetorical analysis – to evaluate their zine’s critique of the most important institutional form of that tradition – the university. I guess my hope in doing so was to demonstrate that the asymmetric power relationships that exist because of systemic inequalities perpetuated by institutions such as universities should not be attributed to the traditions of learning that universities are supposed to uphold. Aristotle and Cicero wanted to empower citizens to be successful in political debate. That is why they created complex theories of rhetorical education. Those who would seek to debate the politics of academia now should study their theories. Hostility toward “Western” logic, dismissing one’s target audience, and a vague contention that the entire tradition of university education is somehow an ideologically-driven system of oppression – those rhetorical moves are not good for anybody.