The African Origins Of Rhetoric

Through a critical analysis of ancient African texts that predate Greco-Roman treatises Cecil Blake revisits the roots of rhetorical theory and challenges what is often advanced as the "darkness metaphor" -- the rhetorical construction of Africa and Africans. Blake offers a thorough examination of Ptah-hotep and core African ethical principles (Maat) and engages rhetorical scholarship within the wider discourse of African development. In so doing, he establishes a direct relationship between rhetoric and development studies in non-western societies and highlights the prospect for applying such principles to ameliorating the development malaise of the continent.

This is an extraordinarily well-balanced collection of essays focused on varied expressions of African American Rhetoric; it also is a critical antidote to a preoccupation with Western Rhetoric as the arbiter of what counts for effective rhetoric. Rather than impose Western terminology on African and African American rhetoric, the essays in this volume seek to illumine rhetoric from within its own cultural expression, thereby creating an understanding grounded in the culture's values. The consequence is a richly detailed and well-researched set of essays. The contribution of African American rhetoric can no longer be rendered invisible through neglect of its tradition. The essays in this volume neither seek to displace Western Rhetoric, nor function as an uncritical paen to Afrocentricity and Africology. This volume is both timely and essential; timely in advancing a better understanding of the richly textured history that is expressed through African American discourse, and essential as a counterpoint to the hegemonic influence of Greek and Roman rhetoric as the origin of rhetorical theory and practice. Written in the spirit of a critical rhetoric, this collection eschews traditional focus on public address and instead offers a rich array of texts, in musical and other forms, that address publics.

The book examines the failures and some of the successes of Africa in its efforts to transform into a society where human security or development in the broadest sense is achieved. It is argued the African continent had, and will continue, to content with disruptions or change on its path to development. Development policy making in this regard, is an art of setting out strategies to build resilience and take advantage of disruptions or change in whatever format: political, economic, health, diplomatic, demographic or even environmental and climatic. The book discusses nine major disruptions in Africa’s socio-economic life and the limits imposed by the rhetoric in development policy: exclusion and social inequality, environmental degradation and climate change, natural resources and poor beneficiation, trade and aid, food insecurity, demography and migration, pandemics and disease burden, conflict and criminality and technology and innovation. The book is intended for intermediate students in African studies, Area Studies, Development Economics, Development Studies, Public Policy and Comparative Politics. In addition will be development practitioners working in developing countries, the UN system, multilateral development banks, donor agencies and regional economic communities in Africa.

As the rich words from the African proverbs resonate into the twenty-first century regarding the importance of identity and telling the stories of people of African descent through the eyes of the people, the grand rhetorician and griot of the twentieth century Dr William Edward Burghardt Du Bois’s infamous problem remains so today – “the problem of the colour-line.” After the election of Barack Hussein Obama, the first African American president of the United States; after the Civil Rights Movement; after Brown versus the Board of Education; after the students’ right to their own language; after Plessy versus Ferguson; and the murders of innocent, young African American males, including Emmett Till, Timothy Thomas, Trayvon Martin, John Crawford III, Tamir Rice, Jordan Davis, Eric Garner, and Mike Brown, people of African descent are still battling with being labelled a “problem in one’s own country” while the USA continues to strive for a post-racial era. W.E.B. Du Bois’s rhetoric and motives in general are more relevant today than ever in reassessing what he so eloquently describes and unveils through the phrase “double consciousness” in Souls of Black Folk (1903), through which he reveals the feeling of a problem. This ground-breaking volume, featuring contributions from W.E.B. Du Bois’s great-grandson, Arthur McFarlane II, among others, is organized into three parts. Part I focuses on the foundation of Du Bois’s Africana Rhetoric through the origins of Africana Studies, Pan Africanism, and Africana Critical Theory. Part II focuses on Du Bois’s rhetorical strategies and rhetorical analyses in his scholarship and life. Part III focuses on gender and sexuality in Du Bois’s selected works. This work, the first of its kind devoted exclusively to Du Bois’s rhetoric and motives—can serve as a blueprint for today as the struggle toward a post racial society continues.

A Companion to African Rhetoric, edited by Segun Ige, Gilbert Motsaathebe, and Omedi Ochieng, presents the reader with different perspectives on African rhetoric mostly from Anglophone sub-Saharan Africa and the Diaspora. The African, Afro-Caribbean, and African American rhetorician contributors conceptualize African rhetoric, examine African political rhetoric, analyze African rhetoric in literature, and address the connection between rhetoric and religion in Africa. They argue for a holistic view of rhetoric on the continent.

In the moralistic texts of jeremiadic discourse, authors lament the condition of society, utilizing prophecy as a means of predicting its demise. This study delves beneath the socio-religious and cultural exterior of the American jeremiadic tradition to unveil the complexities of African American jeremiadic rhetoric in antebellum America. It examines the development of the tradition in response to slavery, explores its contributions to the antebellum social protest writings of African Americans, and evaluates the role of the jeremiad in the growth of an African American literary genre. Despite its situation within an unreceptive environment, the African American jeremiad maintained its power, continuing to influence contemporary African American literary and cultural traditions.

On African-American Rhetoric traces the arc of strategic language use by African Americans from rhetorical forms such as slave narratives and the spirituals to Black digital expression and contemporary activism. The governing idea is to illustrate the basic call-response process of African-American culture and to demonstrate how this dynamic has been and continues to be central to the language used by African Americans to make collective cultural and political statements. Ranging across genres and disciplines, including rhetorical theory, poetry, fiction, folklore, speeches, music, film, pedagogy, and memes, Gilyard and Banks consider language developments that have occurred both inside and outside of organizations and institutions. Along with paying attention to recent events, this book incorporates discussion of important forerunners who have carried the rhetorical baton. These include Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Sojourner Truth, Anna Julia Cooper, W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Toni Cade Bambara, Molefi Asante, Alice Walker, and Geneva Smitherman. Written for students and professionals alike, this book is powerful and instructive regarding the long African-American quest for freedom and dignity.

Despite its centrality to its field, there is no consensus regarding what rhetorical theory is and why it matters. The Ethical Fantasy of Rhetorical Theory presents a critical examination of rhetorical theory throughout history, in order to develop a unifying vision for the field. Demonstrating that theorists have always been skeptical of yet committed to "truth" (however fantastic), Ira Allen develops rigorous notions of truth and of a "troubled freedom" that spring from rhetoric’s depths. In a sweeping analysis from the sophists Aristotle, and Cicero through Kenneth Burke, Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyceta, and contemporary scholars in English, communication, and rhetoric’s other disciplinary homes, Allen offers a novel definition of rhetorical theory: as the self-consciously ethical study of how humans and other symbolic animals negotiate constraints.