Understanding African American Rhetoric

Classical Origins to Contemporary Innovations

Ronald L. Jackson II, Elaine B. Richardson, Ronald L. Jackson II, Elaine B. Richardson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415943864
• eBook ISBN: 9781136727368
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

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.

Section 1 CLASSICAL EGYPTIAN ORIGINS OF AFRICAN AMERICAN RHETORIC

DOI: 10.4324/9781315024332-1

CHAPTER 1 Nommo, Kawaida, and Communicative Practice: Bringing Good into the World

MAULANA KARENGA

DOI: 10.4324/9781315024332-2

SCOPE AND FRAMEWORK

The central project of this essay is to make a useful contribution to the ancient and ongoing conversation around the definition, field, and function of African communicative practice, using classical African sources, principally ancient Egyptian (Kemetic) texts, as a fundamental point of departure and framework for understanding and engaging African American rhetoric. It contains an implicit critique and corrective for the dominant consumerist conception of a rhetoric pressed into the service of vulgar persuasion, advertisement, seduction, and sales. It assumes that not only has the dominant European paradigm abandoned the classical Aristotelian understanding of rhetoric as deliberation and action in the interest of the polis, but also that it is not informed by the possibilities inherent in the rich resources of multicultural contributions to this field (Logan 1999; Asante 1998; Hauser 1998). I will begin with a discussion of tradition and themes in African American rhetorical practice and then continue with a critical engagement of the conceptual construct nommo, its evolution in the 1960s as a central category in Black rhetorical studies, and its usefulness in providing conceptual space not only for African-centered grounding in the field of rhetoric but also for exploring alternative ways of understanding and approaching communicative practice (Hamlet 1998; Niles 1995; Walker 1992).

Within this framework, the communal character of communicative practice is reaffirmed and rhetoric is approached as, above all, a rhetoric of communal deliberation, discourse, and action, oriented toward that which is good for the community and world. And it is here that communicative practice is posed as both expressive and constitutive of community, a process and a practice of building community and bringing good into the world. This understanding brings into focus and complements the ethical teaching of the Odu Ifa 78:1, the sacred text of ancient Yorubaland, that “humans are divinely chosen to bring good into the world” and that this is the fundamental mission and meaning in human life (Karenga 1999a, 228).

I will also examine the ancient Egyptian concept of mdw nfr, eloquent and effective speech, delineating its socioethical concerns and retrieving and articulating these concerns as an essential component of the conception and pursuit of the central interests of this project. It should be understood that my intention here is not to construct a causal relationship between ancient Egyptian and African American rhetorical practice. Rather, it is to identify shared insights and orientations in a larger African tradition of communicative practice and to recover and employ these classical African understandings to expand the range of useful concepts in defining and explicating communicative practice in general and the African American rhetorical project in particular. This approach parallels the use of classical Greek rhetorical insights by European scholars to develop and explicate theories of rhetoric and its practice by various European cultures without needing to show causal links of rhetorical practice between ancient Greece and, let us say, Vikings or Victorian England. Framing the discussion within Kawaida philosophy, I will then consolidate the multiple ranges of meanings of African communicative practice into four enduring socioethical concerns and use this conceptual construct to demonstrate coherence and continuity in the African communicative practice tradition, from ancient origins to modern ethical engagement with the critical issues of our times. These enduring socioethical concerns are the dignity and rights of the human person, the well-being and flourishing of family and community, the integrity and value of the environment, and the reciprocal solidarity and cooperation for mutual benefit of humanity.

Again, the approach to this project is essentially an Afrocentric cultural approach rooted in Kawaida philosophy, which defines itself as an ongoing synthesis of the best of African thought and practice in constant exchange with the world and is directed toward the enduring historical project of maximum human freedom and human flourishing times (Karenga 1997a, 1997b, 1980). It poses culture as a unique and instructive way of being human in the world and a fundamental framework for self-understanding and self-assertion in it. Kawaida also maintains that as persons in general and intellectuals in particular, we must constantly dialog with African culture, asking it questions and seeking from it answers to the fundamental and enduring concerns of hu-mankind. This dialog with African culture requires that one ask at every critical juncture of research, writing, and discourse the crucial question of what Africa (i.e., African people and African culture) has to offer in efforts toward understanding human thought and practice, improving the human condition, and enhancing the human prospect. Moreover, to dialog with African culture is to constantly engage its texts, continental and diasporan, ancient and modern. This will include engaging its oral, written, and living-practice texts, its paradigms, its worldview and values, and its understanding of itself and the world in an ongoing search for ever better answers to the fundamental, enduring, and current questions and challenges of our lives.

TRADITION AND THEMES

To engage in rhetoric as an African is to enter an ancient and ongoing tradition of communicative practice, a practice that reaffirms not only the creative power of the word but also rootedness in a world historical community and culture, which provides the foundation and framework for self-understanding and self-assertion in the world (Asante 1998; Karenga 1997b; Obenga 1990). It is a tradition that from its inception has been concerned with building community, reaffirming human dignity, and enhancing the life of the people. It has expanded in more recent times to include vital contributions to the struggles for liberation in the political, economic, and cultural senses as a rhetoric of resistance. Thus, whereas Herbert Simons (1978, 50) talks of “distinctive and recurring patterns of rhetorical practice” as defining a genre, I want to identify these defining patterns of African rhetorical practice and locate them into the larger context of a distinct and ongoing tradition. By tradition I mean, within the framework of Kawaida philosophy, a cultural core that forms the central locus of our self-understanding and self-assertion in the world and which is mediated by constantly changing historical circumstances and an ongoing internal dialog of reassessment and continuous development (Karenga 2002, 1997a, 1995, 1980).

Here tradition is not simply an obvious source of authority, but also in the Asantean sense the source of location, “the constantly presenting and representing context, the evolving presentation context, the perspective—that is history to us” (Asante 1990, 5–6). It is, he says, the source of “codes, paradigms, symbols, motifs, myths and circles of discussion that reinforce the centrality of African ideals as a valid frame of reference for acquiring and examining data.” Again, then, this corresponds to the Kawaida concept of tradition as a core source out of which the materials, methods, and methodologies of rhetoric and other communicative practices are made. And as part of the larger cultural context, it becomes an essential source of our self-understanding and self-assertion in the world (Karenga 1997a). It is a tradition that incorporates unity and diversity, consensus and disagreement, affirmation and opposition, criticism and corrective, and a critical integration of the past with the understanding and engagement of the present and the aspirations and strivings for the future.

As an expression and constitutive process of community, African rhetoric is first of all a rhetoric of community. In other words, it evolves in ancient African culture as a rhetoric of communal deliberation, discourse, and action, directed toward bringing good into the community and the world (Karenga 1999, 1994; Asante 1998; Parkinson 1991; Assmann 1990; Gyekye 1987; Perry 1986). In the context of historical and current oppression, African rhetoric is also a rhetoric of resistance. Clearly, given a community forcibly transferred to America during the holocaust of enslavement and systematically oppressed since then, a central aspect of the corpus of African American rhetorical practice is rooted in and reflective of constant resistance (Logan 1999; Hamlet 1998; Niles 1995; Walker 1992; Howard-Pitney 1990; Smith 1972; Foner 1972; Bosmajian and Bosmajian 1969; Woodson 1925; Dunbar 1914). Thus, some of African America’s greatest addresses and messages are, like the people themselves, conceived and forged in the crucible of struggle (see Glenn 1986 for an extensive bibliography).

In these same texts and others, one finds that African American rhetoric is also a rhetoric of reaffirmation. It is self-consciously committed to the reaffirmation of the status of the African person and African people as bearers of dignity and divinity, of their right to a free, full, and meaningful life, and of their right and responsibility to speak their own special cultural truth to the world and make their own unique contribution to the forward flow of human history (Karenga 1980). But in reaffirming their own human rights and social and world-historical responsibilities to bring good into the world, at the same time they frame the discourse in such a way that the claim is on behalf of and in the interest of all people, especially the most vulnerable and marginalized (Karenga 1999, 1984). This is the meaning of Asante’s statement concerning the central themes and intentionality of Black speakers: “In a real sense their speeches document the search by all men for the basic and fundamental rights of dignity, respect and equality.” And he concludes that “because they record the speaker’s response to the living issues of justice and freedom, these addresses are part of America’s greatest heritage” (Smith 1971, vii). Finally, African rhetorical practice is a rhetoric of possibility. It seeks not simply to persuade, but to share, to inform, to question, and to search for and explore possibilities in the social and human condition. And it is in this regard that it is an active call to counsel and collaboration in the ongoing quest for effective ways to solve human problems, elevate the human spirit, reaffirm the right, create expanding space for maximum human freedom and human flourishing, and constantly bring good into the world.

NOMMO AND THE REAFFIRMATION OF THE '60S: SOCIOHISTORICAL SETTING

As I have noted elsewhere, “the Reaffirmation of the 60’s stands, after the classical period and the Holocaust of enslavement, as one of the modal periods of African history” (Karenga 2002, 183–84). By modal periods I mean periods that define the conception and practice of Black life in profound and enduring ways and speak to the best of what it means to be African and human in the fullest sense. The classical period in the Nile Valley reflects the African commitment to knowledge, ethical, and spiritual grounding and cultural excellence, introducing and developing some of the basic disciplines of human knowledge and contributing to the forward flow of human history. It is here that the oldest texts on rhetoric as well as other disciplines are found (Freeman 1997; Diop 1987, 1991; El Nadoury 1990; Harris 1971).

The holocaust of enslavement tested and tempered African people; it called forth and demonstrated their adaptive vitality, human durability, and internal capacity to persevere and prevail. And it also reinforced their commitment to human freedom and human dignity in profound and active ways of struggle, of resistance, and of holding on to their humanity in the most inhuman conditions. The modal period of the ’60s was above all a reaffirmation—a reaffirmation of our Africanness and social justice tradition, which had at its core a flowering of creativity and struggle, rhetoric, remembrance and resistance (Woodard 1999; Conyers 1997; Van Deburg 1993; Williams 1987; Pinkney 1976; Brisbane 1974). It is in the 1960s, a decade of storm, steadfastness, and struggle, that African Americans not only reaffirmed their identity and dignity as an African people, but compelled U.S. society and its academies to recognize and respect this most ancient of human cultures and civilizations and to teach them in the universities in newly established departments, programs and centers. And it is in this decade that we struggled to return to our own history, speak our own special cultural truth to the world, and self-consciously make our own unique contribution to how this country is reconceived and reconstructed.

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Section 1 Classical Egyptian Origins of African American Rhetoric
• Section 2 Manifestations of African American Rhetoric and Orality
• Section 3 Politics of Defining African American Rhetoric
• Section 4 African American Rhetorical Analyses of Struggle and Resistance
• Section 5 Trends and Innovations in Analyzing Contemporary African American Rhetoric
• Section 6 Visions for Research in African American Rhetoric
• About the Contributors
• Index