No Text for my Context

I’ve narrowed down my time and location (1834-1845, Lowell, MA), however I’m still having trouble coming up with an artifact to analyze. The difficulty with analyzing the strikes of 1834 and 1836 is the lack of a clearly identifiable artifact, at least that I’ve been able to locate. And at this point doing archival research isn’t really an option (anyone want to fly me to Massachusetts?) What I have been able to find is the petition the women circulated, a document about unions that they attached to the petition, and a newspaper article referencing the second strike. Part of me wonders if I’m looking in the right place. And if I am, have I found enough to analyze?

I’m still interested in The Lowell Offering generally, but I think it is another project. On the one hand, it offers an excellent look into the creative output of mid-18^th century, working women. In a way, it reminds me of Jacques Ranciere’s work in The Nights of Labor. And in fact, his historical analysis provides a useful (and perhaps novel) way of looking at the Offering. However, it lacks an apparently obvious connection to the labor agitation that was occurring in the Lowell Mills, and for this project I’m largely interested in engaging labor movement history.

Having said that, I think I have found an artifact that allows me to touch on the Offering and the labor movement—but I’m just now considering it. The potential object of study is an exchange between Sarah Bagley, editor of the woman’s section of the Voice of Industry and founding member of the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association (who one researcher claims is the first female labor organizer in the U.S.—though I’m going to need to do some more digging to verify it) and the former editor of the Offering, Harriet Farley (or Harriot F. Curtis—I don’t have the name in front of me). The exchange takes place in the letter-to-the-editor section of Industry (I believe), in which Bagley accuses Farley of establishing an editorial policy that favored views held by the mill industrialists, while neglecting a pro-worker stance. The exchange is insightful as it can be read as a theoretical-political dispute. However, unlike the usual theoretical-political disputes that were taking place between intellectual-elites in the labor movement, this dispute features members of the working class. I need to examine it further before I can legitimately make that claim, but I think something interesting might be going on.

I’m still working through this, but I just wanted to get my thoughts out there.

Choosing a Topic and Narrowing it Down

My research interests, conceived very (very) broadly, are centered around (re)theorizing the possibilities for social change. The question I've started to formulate around this (and where rhetoric comes home to play, especially regarding invention) is: What kinds of public rhetoric (and/or discourse) produce the possibilities for radical social change? How do they do it? So, I'm looking for a case study that will contribute to that research agenda (recognizing the necessity for other, more specific research questions once I select the particular* artifact for this paper).

So, with those general interests in mind, I need to come up with a case study for this specific course. To help narrow it down, I’ve come up with several criteria. The case study should 1) be an example of social change (failed or realized), 2) be historical, 3) have a clearly delineated text of some sort that is available for criticism (meaning, I want to have something a little more concrete for this project).

The other day I met with Dr. Poirot and she and I discussed several possibilities. One possibility she mentioned was looking at the Lowell Mill Girls Strikes of 1834 and 1836. As early examples of women’s organizing, the strikes provide an opportunity to look at the intersections of gender and class. I’ve been doing some reading about the surrounding time period, and found particularly interesting a monthly magazine called The Lowell Offering, that included poetry, essays, short stories, etc., written by the Lowell Mill Girls. This topic gives me a couple of directions. I could choose to look at discourses immediately surrounding the historical strike, or alternatively I could start looking through the Offering, started four years after the second strike, and see how these women’s reflections on the strike (maybe there are reflections?) help influence/orient our understanding of early female attempts at social change, and what the broader implications are for that understanding. So, still a lot more narrowing to do, but I think I've found a starting point.

Having said that, I implore you for comments and suggestions.

*I'm feeling very self-conscious about using this word after our discussion in class today. Lol.

A Brief Description

Elizabeth Cady Stanton read the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions to the Women’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York in July of 1848. The text is designed to parallel an earlier declaration penned in 1776: The Declaration of Independence. The Sentiments and Resolutions provides a list of injuries—15 in total—that men have perpetrated on women. It then offers a series of 12 resolutions, the implementation of which would help to eliminate the “absolute tyranny” of men over women. The enumeration of the injuries produces an overwhelming effect on the reader. As the accumulation of offenses are stacked on one another, line by line, those offense also come to weigh heavily on the reader’s mind. The list of resolutions produces a similar effect, in which the weight of the work required to correct the injustices weighs heavier and heavier as each resolution is read.

Much like the text it imitates, the tone of the Sentiments and Resolutions is strident and sweeping. However, though the Sentiment’s most obvious characteristic is its similarity to the Declaration of Independence, its most striking characteristic is the manner in which it departs from its precursor—a departure that can be read as a critical failure. This failure functions to expose the failures of the Declaration of Independence. Namely, that by excluding women, the Declaration did not stand up to its own declared principles. Evidence of this omission appears quickly in the document, beginning in the second sentence. Where the Declaration posits “that all men are created equal,” the Sentiments and Resolutions declares “that all men and women are created equal.” This maneuver exposes the word men as a non-inclusive term. By placing the word women next to men, the document draws attention to the exclusivity of men (both the Declaration’s writers and those honored with its rights), as well as the Declaration’s own failure to extend equal protection to all people in the United States.

The very first post on my very first blog

The subtitle of my blog, taken from Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road,” says something about the potential of rhetoric and my approach to it. Namely, writing about rhetoric, either theoretically or historically, is always a redemptive process. On the one hand, rhetoric requires redemption from its own proclivity for flattery, from its own ‘mere-ness’. On the other hand, “every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably…Nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history” (Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History). However, another of Whitman’s poems says perhaps something more about this specific blog:

I believe of all those men and women that fill’d the/ unnamed lands, everyone exists this hour here or/ elsewhere, invisible to us,/ In exact proportion to what he or she grew from in life,/ and out of what he or she did, felt, became, loved,/ sinn’d, in life (“Unnamed Lands”).

Which is to say: this blog is a collective endeavor, and in at least two ways. First, my topic of study will come from the collective that is the past (which speaks to the historical orientation I’d like to take in my studies). Second, my attempts to write critically about that past will be influenced by the collective contributions of my colleagues in Dr. Kristan Poirot’s "Rhetoric and Textual Methods" course. In keeping with the pragmatic nature of the latter endeavor, this blog has four goals (subject to change):

1. To provide a platform for my writing and ideas related to rhetoric.
2. To improve my writing skills.
3. To better understand (and get better at) the revision process.
4. To receive feedback from my peers (and whoever else perchance runs into this blog) on both my writing and thoughts.

I also hope this blog can function somewhat beyond Fall Semester 2010 at Texas A&M University. Namely, as I develop and pursue other ideas and writing, this blog will continue to be a place to perform those rhetorical contributions as well as get feedback on them. I might also post things of general interest on occasion.