for nerds: history, punctuation

It's almost as if Chloe Angyal over at feministing.com is afraid of talking seriously about history. Or is it really just "nerdy," for example, to remember (which she does) "the role of Black women activists in the abolition movement" from 1833 to the 1870s (as blogged by historian and professor of English, Carla L. Peterson)?

I did think it was really nerdy for Mike Sangrey over at Better Bibles Blog to go on and on and on about punctuation.  Or was he just trying to get us to notice how wacky his punctuation was while he was making his pronouncements?  He was trying to convince us of clarity and naturalness, saying things like, "So, punctuation is required in the translation, or it wouldn’t be clear and natural—it wouldn’t communicate to an English audience."  I don't really see that as particularly obvious or fair to a writer, and it gives the translator both a lot of latitude and liberty (contra "Nature"), which is how it should be, I believe.

But then who am I?  For family portraits, you may find me wearing such t-shirts:

And sometimes I like blogging on history and on punctuation together, as HISTORYANDPUNCTUATIONTOGETHER.  Sometimes I'll blog on Aristotle.  Wouldn't a dissertation be enough?  Sometimes I'll blog on the Bible.  Wasn't sunday school quite enough?

Well, call me what you like.  I think you're reading this blog post, aren't you?  Maybe you're one of those translation nerds.  If so, then stay tuned for more.

One day, one of Aristotle's students (it could have been Alexander the Great) read this:

If you recognize it, then it's likely that you know it wasn't written for you.  It wasn't.  You know it's a little clip from Aristotle's Rhetoric.  Yep, that's right.  We know it as the book called "The Rhetoric," or as what its most recent translator, George A. Kennedy, calls On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civil Discourse.  And we know that it's really 3 Books, and the little clip above is what has been punctuated as Book 3, Chapter 5, paragraph 6.  Kennedy has entitled the context here as this - "Chapter 5: To Hellēnizein, or Grammatical Correctness" and has put that title, without my quotation marks but with his own white space, as the header on page 206 of his book, the translation of Aristotle's book(s) on rhetoric.

We can also see that paragraph 6 here is how Aristotle rags on the "punctuation" of Heraclitus.  (To be sure, we already know from other things Aristotle wrote how much he disliked Heraclitus, who, for Aristotle, did not write with "Grammatical Correctness," or To Hellēnizein.)  Aristotle is stressing how important it is to be clear and natural with Greek, for his elite Greek all-male students.  (It's sort of like Mike Sangrey's mantra for Bible translators punctuating).

So, some later editor of Aristotle makes these helpful changes in punctuation, helping out Aristotle, not necessarily Heraclitus:

[6] πέμπτον ἐν τῷ τὰ πολλὰ καὶ ὀλίγα καὶ ἓν ὀρθῶς ὀνομάζειν: “οἱ δ᾽ ἐλθόντες ἔτυπτόν με”.  ὅλως δὲ δεῖ εὐανάγνωστον εἶναι τὸ γεγραμμένον καὶ εὔφραστον: ἔστιν δὲ τὸ αὐτό: ὅπερ οἱ πολλοὶ σύνδεσμοι οὐκ ἔχουσιν, οὐδ᾽ ἃ μὴ ῥᾴδιον διαστίξαι, ὥσπερ τὰ Ἡρακλείτου. τὰ γὰρ Ἡρακλείτου διαστίξαι ἔργον διὰ τὸ ἄδηλον εἶναι ποτέρῳ πρόσκειται, τῷ ὕστερον ἢ τῷ πρότερον, οἷον ἐν τῇ ἀρχῇ αὐτῇ τοῦ συγγράμματος: φησὶ γὰρ “τοῦ λόγου τοῦδ᾽ ἐόντος ἀεὶ ἀξύνετοι ἄνθρωποι γίγνονται”: ἄδηλον γὰρ τὸ ἀεί, πρὸς ποτέρῳ δεῖ διαστίξαι.

And that's when the English translators get busy.  Here's the renderings of the top three translators (I guess they're the most-read):

John H. Freese had this in 1926 and his later publisher, for the Harvard Loeb Classical Library, put the revised punctuated Aristotle text right next to Freese's English --

The fifth rule consists in observing number, according as many, few, or one are referred to: “They, having come (pl.), began to beat (pl.) me.”
   Generally speaking, that which is written should be easy to read or easy to utter, which is the same thing. Now, this is not the case when there is a number of connecting particles, or when the punctuation is hard, as in the writings of Heraclitus. For it is hard, since it uncertain to which word another belongs, whether to that which follows or that which precedes; for instance, at the beginning of his composition he says: “Of this reason which exists always men are ignorant,” where it is uncertain whether “always” should go with “which exists” or with “are ignorant.”

Then H. Rhys Roberts, the same year, has this (which was republished also, in 1954), with a few updates in natural and clear punctuation, like so --

(5) A fifth rule is to express plurality, fewness, and unity by the correct wording, e.g. "Having come, they struck me (oi d elthontes etupton me)." It is a general rule that a written composition should be easy to read and therefore easy to deliver. This cannot be so where there are many connecting words or clauses, or where punctuation is hard, as in the writings of Heracleitus. To punctuate Heracleitus is no easy task, because we often cannot tell whether a particular word belongs to what precedes or what follows it. Thus, at the outset of his treatise he says, "Though this truth is always men understand it not," where it is not clear with which of the two clauses the word "always" should be joined by the punctuation.

Much more recently, and to make things more natural and clear for students of rhetoric in 1991 (and then 2007), Kennedy has this --

6. Fifth is the correct naming of plural and singular:  "Having come, they beat me."  What is written should generally be easy to read and easy to speak--which is the same thing.  Use of many connectives⁶⁴ does not have this quality, nor do phrases not easily punctuated,⁶⁵ for example, the writings of Heraclitus. To punctuate the writings of Heraclitus is a difficult task because it is unclear what goes with what, whether with what follows or with what precedes. For example, in the very beginning of his treatise he says, "Of this Logos that exists always ignorant are men." It is unclear whether "always" goes with what precedes [or what follows].

64. Polloi syndesmoi, or polysyndeton, regarded by later rhetoricians as a figure of speech involing a surfeit of conjunctions: i.e., A and B and C, etc., rather than A, B, C. . . . .
65. Classical Greek was generally written without punctuation and even without spacing between the words; it thus had to be "punctuated" by the reader.

Now, if you're looking for a point from me, an idea, a belief, a conclusion of sorts, then it's this: there's very little "natural" about language like this. Rules are written by humans, even punctuation rules. And these are often broken. I believe the KJV Bible, and just about every Bible before it and after has broken punctuation rules.  (I wanted to say that today, just because it's a historical one, you know, the KJV birthday.)

So the king of pronunciation is the one who makes up the rules. A creative writer, like Heraclitus, might be difficult or playful or allow too much play. And so somebody like Aristotle will come in to try to shut that down, to attempt to shut him up. It's sort of comical when you look at it, because Aristotle is just as nerdy as Heraclitus before him. And his punctuation is hardly any clearer. It's just different in how it pronounces the need for clarity and for naturalness and for correctness.  What might you think?  Is this nerdy stuff?  Does it have relevance to history for you, to bible, to translation?  Is one of the four translations above (that Greek one and the three Englishes) clearer or more natural or more accurate or correct to the original than the others?

Reappropriating Parable: recovery to interrogate the ideology of slavery and absolute submission in the parables

Ancient Roman slavery ideology that required absolute submission and unyielding loyalty from slaves and freedpersons is reflected in the New Testament.  These reflections of the social reality of slavery and slave ideology are not limited to Pauline texts.  But the Pauline and deuteropauline texts that mandate the submission of slaves and women certainly have evoked creative responses from African Americans, forcing us either to reinterpret oppressive texts or to find refuge, affirmation, and hope in other, more liberating texts.
      Confronted with the potential obstacle of [slave and woman] oppressive Pauline texts, African American women appropriated other texts to support God's call on their lives....
      Certainly, many Pauline texts are ostensibly antithetical to the claims of Gal. 3:28 and have been used to oppress women and others.  But the Pauline texts are not the only texts that reinscribe and fail to challenge prevailing ancient slavery stereotypes and ideologies.  For example, several parables in the Synoptic Gospels reinscribe ancient slave ideology.  The parables about slave-master relationships promote proper servile behavior and condone severe punishment of noncompliant slaves.
      Why is there not as much indignation [of African Americans] expressed toward slave language in the Gospels as in the Pauline texts?  Jennifer Glancy makes a helpful point:  "Slavery in the parables typically functions metaphorically, representing the Christian's relationship to God.  Perhaps because of this theological displacement, New Testament scholars have been slow to interrogate the ideology of slavery in the parables." ....
      Slavery in first-century Roman society was no less cruel and inhumane than in any other slave society....  In general the oppressive ideals of ancient Roman slavery are reinscribed upon some biblical texts....  African Americans have reinterpreted, trumped, and rejected such oppressive texts and the oppressive hermeneutical maneuvers that have relied on such texts.  But African Americans must [also] treat with suspicion other biblical texts, such as parable narratives that also reinscribe ancient slave/ master [and male/ female and any oppressive one human / another, subjugating] ideology.  Therefore, African Americans ... should acknowledge the merit in Audre Lorde's admonition that "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."  But this affirmation should not presuppose that every tool the master uses belongs solely to or was conceived of or created by the master.  When white slave-masters claimed sole authority over the Bible and its interpretation, our ancestors creatively seized and reappropriated some of the very tools the master used against them.

-------

above, an excerpt from the chapter "Slavery in the Early Church," by Dr. Mitzi J. Smith, Assistant Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Origins, Detroit Center, Ashland Theological Seminary, in  True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary.  (HT Rod)

A Strong (Black) (Woman) Translation of Proverbs 31

On Suzanne's Bookshelf is Sunday's post entitled "My lovely wife ...", which points us to Dave Warnock's post "My wife ...".  And the question raised is the interpretation and translation of Proverbs 31 from the perspective(s) of men who are husbands of the women who are their subjects of the discussion.

But below, here, and somewhat in contrast, is posted a woman's translation, a strong (Black woman's) translation of the text.  As an introduction to the Prov. 31 exposition, I've included the scholar's brief paragraph (with exposition from other [women] scholars) on an earlier verse in Proverbs; I'm including the paragraph to show the context and the care and the carefulness in the strength of the translation.


--->>

      Proverbs 14:1 presents a translational problem as well, and thus one of transmission of meaning as well.  The Hebrew states:  "The wisdom of women builds her house."  That is what the actual translation should be, but this is not shown in the biblical translation into English.  It is glossed over.  The translation that is given verges on being [merely] an interpretation ([Carol] Meyers 2001: [page] 306 ["Wise Woman Building Her House" in Women in Scripture: A Dictionary of Named and Unnamed Women in the Hebrew Bible, the Apocryphal/ Deuterocanonical Books, and the New Testament, ed. Carol Meyers, Toni Craven, and Ross S. Kraemer;  Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans]).  Meyers sees this verse as being a term for the family household.  She also sees it as an expression of female agency (2001:306).  What is found within this verse is the understanding of collective wisdom of the foremothers throughout the generations coming forward and influencing the female members of successive generations as they build households, nurture offspring, and pass on their wisdom to their daughters.  Implicit in the text is the understanding of the transmission of wisdom as an aspect of oral pedagogy, which is a combination of tradition and practice.
      One of the most popular sections found in the book of Proverbs is Prov. 31:10-31.  It has often been preached on Women's Day in many African American churches.  Although beautiful in its lyrical form in the Hebrew, the passage can also be considered problematic by many Africana women who read it and try in some way to identify with or live up to this woman who appears to be ideal.
      The woman portrayed in this passage is a married, wealthy woman with servants, her own business, and a prominent husband.  Many persons reading this section might question how this section, this paradigm, can in any way be relevant to Black women on the whole, due to the fact that many do not fit into the patterns.  The possibility is minuscule at best.  However, there are yet possibilities for identification within the text.  Were there to be an adjustment in the translation of the adjective used to describe the woman, it would open up the possibility of identifying with this woman being described in the text.  The adjective in the text used to describe the wife/woman can also be translated as "strength," "power," or "courageous."  Thus, it can legitimately be translated as "a woman of strength" or "a woman of power" or "a woman who is courageous."  With this retranslation of the text, by saying "whoever finds a strong woman, a 'courageous woman' or a 'powerful woman,'" one finds a paradigm within which an Africana woman can place herself.  Also, it is not necessary to translate the word that is translated to mean "wife" as such.  Thus, again with a valid retranslation of the text, a place can be found for the woman who is single with children and who faces life with strength and courage daily.  Thus, this woman becomes real for Africana women.
      There have been countless Afro-Carribbean and African American women throughout history -- unsung heroines -- who have risen to that level.  Afro-Carribbean and African American mothers, grandmothers, and even great-grandmothers have for centuries risen to the challenges that arose for them and their families, meeting them valiantly, capably, and successfully.  Within our histories are many untold stories of women who have tirelessly worked with the willing hands of verse 13; women who have awakened while it was still night and began to work, as noted in 31:15, just to ensure that their families would have a meal before they went to work.  These are the women who stayed up late at night, just as noted in 31:18b, to make sure that their family's needs were met.  They did not have financial wealth, but their wealth of spirit and courage in the face of overwhelming odds and their ability to stretch their money in order to "make do," speak to their valiant spirit and their enormous capabilities.  These women abound in our present day and in our past.  Within African Diaspora communities, it has long been the practice for those who have little to extend a helping hand to those who have less.  There exists ample evidence, among the women of these communities, of the strength and dignity noted in 31:25.  One only needs to look at the matriarchs throughout the African Diaspora for examples.  What has been often woefully lacking is the praise due these women.

---

above, an excerpt from the chapter "Proverbs," by Dr. Naomi P. Franklin, Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Virginia Union University, and Preacher at Pilgrim Journey Baptist Church, in The Africana Bible: Reading Israel's Scriptures from Africa and the African Diaspora. 

HT David Ker

Rape and Ruth: the woman and the text

      Marriage is a contentious category in the United States as some are asking who can and should marry, others are demanding the right to marry as a fundamental civil and human right, and still others are insisting on preserving a particular biblical paradigm.  But marriage is a normative category in most of Africa and Asia.  At the same time, the normative experience of black women in the Americas who do not marry shapes a reading of [the book of] Ruth that may not be congruent with Africana readers in other contexts for whom marriage is normative.  Asian and Africana readers frequently share a sense of cultural familiarity with the story of Ruth because of the focus on the mother-in-law/ daughter-in-law relationship, the cultural and societal vulnerability of widows, and the necessity of producing live offspring, preferably male, to secure a woman's status and economic well-being and that of her family.
      As an Africana reader, I am particularly interested in how issues of translation affect how scriptures are read, heard, understood, and interpreted in the broader African diaspora.  In a working paper on African feminist postcolonial biblical interpretation, Musa Dube notes the rarity of women on committees responsible for major translations of the scriptures (such as UBS; this is also true for NRSV, JPS, and others) and the tendency for translators and their translations to advance the aims of empire.  Construction of gender and gender roles, including marriage and motherhood, is one well-attested aim of empire.  An Africana translation-sensitive reading of the book of Ruth calls into question the virtue and value of Ruth's marriage to Boaz even as it recognizes the import of marriage in the ancient and contemporary African and Asian contexts from which the scriptures emerged and in which they continue to be venerated.
      The normative portrayal of marriage in Ruth is a particular problem for English readers because it masks sexual and domestic violence in a text that has been canonized as scripture for Jews and Christians.  There are at least three indicators that Ruth was abducted into marriage:  (1) the use of the verb ns', "lift," with "woman," instead of the standard lach, "take (as wife)," (2) the long-standing Israelite practice of abduction or rape-marriage, and (3) the preferential abduction of foreign women for rape-marriage.
      The verb in Ruth 1:4, vayis'u, from ns', "to lift" or "pick up," may be taken to indicate that Ruth and Orpah, both Moabite women, were abducted into marriage.  I translate the first three works of Ruth 1:4, "They-abducted for-themselves Moabite-women. . . . "  The verb ns' occurs 661 times in the MT.  The primary meaning of ns', according to The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT), is "to carry" or "to lift."  In virtually every translation of ns' in which the object is not a person, the verb is rendered with some form of "lift," "carry," "take," or something similar.  Any thing or person may be the object of ns':  the hand (Deut. 32:20), prayer (Jer. 7:13), or sin may be lifted off of a person or community (Isa. 53:11), and so forth.  In Ruth ns' is also used to indicate lifting grain in 2:18.  Women are the object of ns' five times:  Judges 21:23; Ruth 1:4; Ezra 10:44; 2 Chr. 13:21 and 24:3.  Note that in Judges, the context is the abduction of sexually naive girls from Shiloh into forced or rape-marriages for the purpose of progeny.  The verb chtph in Judges 21:21, "to catch" (women), functions as a synonym.  In Ezra, the women in question are specified as foreign.  In 2 Chr. 13:21, Abijah's collection of women and the resulting offspring is cited as evidence of his strength in the previous verse, suggesting that these were abduction-marriages....
      The normative verb indicating marriage in the Hebrew scriptures, lach, "to take," with a woman as the object, indicates in every case in the Hebrew scriptures socially sanctioned union (Gen 4:19; Exod. 6:20; Jer. 16:2, and so on)....  Rape-marriage as a normative practice is introduced in Numbers 31, where sexually naïve girls are abducted as "booty," shalal.  It is codified subsequently in Deuteronomy 20,21, and 24.  Among the modifications introduced are the shift of focus from any outsider girl whose people are designated as "enemies" (as in Num. 31:19) to "beautiful" women and girls among the enemy (Deut. 20:11).  Deuteronomy20:12-13 also calls for the abducted women and girls to be stripped, their heads shaved, and their nails cut....
      .... The very name, "Moab," literally "from [my] father," evokes the alleged incestuous and therefore despicable nature of all Moabites according to the Israelite account of their origins in the Genesis 19 account of Lot and his daughters.  As a result, Moabites, particularly Moabite women, are highly sexualized in the scriptures of Israel, as are many contemporary Africana women readers of those same scriptures.
      Given the specific vocabulary deployed in the text and Ruth's identity as a Moabite woman -- which she never escapes -- Ruth is multiply marginalized, socially and sexually vulnerable.  Ruth and Orpah's marriages, therefore, hide dirty not-so-little secrets, covered up by generations of male translators.  Yet the experience of abduction-marriage and forcible pregnancy is not unimaginable to contemporary Africana readers.  In some parts of Eastern and raped into marriage.
      The Associated Press (AP) ran a story on June 21, 2005, under an Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, dateline in which a twelve-year-old girl, kidnapped by men who wanted to force her into marriage, was rescued by three lions that chased off her abductors and guarded her until police and relatives located her.  Sergeant Wondimu Wedajo of the local police reported that the men had held the girl for seven days, repeatedly beating her:  "Often these young girls are raped and severely beaten to force them to accept the marriage."
     The AP report noted that in Ethiopia, kidnapping has been part of the marriage customs for quite some time and that the United Nations estimates that more than 70 percent of marriages in Ethiopia occured by abduction, particularly in rural areas where the majority of the country's population lives.  (The AP report did not delineate its sources).
      Interpreters appealing to biblical narratives to describe idealized marriage have in many cases legitimized violence in marriage.  Religious authorities (Bible translators, pastors, seminary professors) have been negligent (and, I argue, criminally so) in failing to expose the ways in which the biblical narrative sanctions and contributes to the abuse of women in general and wives in particular.  By highlighting Ruth's embrace of Naomi and Naomi's god, interpreters of the book of Ruth have regularly overlooked the colence with which Ruth was initiated into marriage (and relationship with Naomi), as specified by the Biblical Hebrew vocabulary of that union.  Biblical interpreters, like all readers, are shaped by their own constructed cultures, which they in turn lay onto the text even as they identify "biblical principles" for marriage.  In doing so, lay and professional, clergy and academic interpreters of the Bible overlook the violence in which many women live, particularly in their marriages.  Men in every part of the world rape their wives.  According to Molly Egan and Jason Wood's 1999 Lehigh University report, The Abolition of Marital Rape Exemption, in the United States, spousal rape was criminalized by only seventeen out of fifty states in 1996.  By 2007, all fifty states and the District of Columbia had criminalized spousal rape.  (The state of New York relies on the ruling of an appeals court in 1984, People vs. Liberta, because an exemption for married men accused of raping their wives remains on the books.)  Spousal rape affects all people in the United States and beyond, including those in the African dispersion.
----

above, an excerpt from the section "Marriage," in the chapter "Ruth," by Wil Gafney, in The Africana Bible: Reading Israel's Scriptures from Africa and the African Diaspora. 

HT David Ker

Women, Africana Reality, and the Bible

      What immediately comes to mind when I ponder further my connectedness with my sisters and the Bible is my encounter with the latter at the Elminah Castle in Ghana in 2000.  I stood in one of the rooms, angered by a poster with a quotation from Psalm 132:14.  The core of the poster's message was that God was in the place of slavery!  There, at the western corner of the African continent, I remembered how this book, which has come to be valued and shunned by many African peoples, functioned to sanction all forms of oppression that were to become their painful legacies.  Some were hurled from that same location to the Americas, which some remained to be subjugated and colonized.  I remembered how the Bible was systematically used to sanction racial segregation in South Africa.  As sons and daughters of Africa bore, and still bear, the brunt of their Blackness, the daughters have been, and still are, at the receiving end.  The latter are connected in their struggles against a variety of life-denying forces in their local contexts and globally....

     I first encountered the Bible in early childhood at home (ga-Mphahlele), in the church, and later at school.  My family formed part of a group designated majakane, a church-going African people who supposedly (that is, mainly in public) shunned African traditional customs.  The majakane stood in contrast to the so-called heathens (bahedene) who openly rejected Christianity.  They freely engaged in African traditional life.  In that setting, the Bible was successfully used to divide kindred peoples!  I later came to embrace it in my teen years when I got attracted to Pentecostal theology.  Later, I encountered it as a university student in biblical studies classes, as a graduate student of Hebrew Bible, and now as a bosadi (womanhood) Hebrew Bible scholar.

--
a couple of paragraphs from a chapter with the title I've borrowed here as the title of my post.  It's in the book The Africana Bible: Reading Israel's Scriptures from Africa and the African Diaspora.  (HT David Ker, who may now regret giving it to me.)  The excerpt above is from Madipoane Masenya (ngwan'a Mphahlele).

Choosing your methodS

April DeConick has prompted another interesting discussion, defending one method of historiography over another, or so it seems.  The Bible and / or History are what're at stake for so many, or so it seems.  First, she gives (her) "perspective" (i.e., "Historical-critical scholarship is [to be] built on the presuppositions of the scientific search for knowledge."). Second, she coins as "confessional" those "scholars who are so invested theologically in a religious tradition and its maintenance [that they] are willing to suspend what we [historical-critical scientific types] know to be factual about our world in order to read their scriptures as fact." Then she comes in like Moses and lays down the "10 commandments" in scholarship with respect to the bible, and history, like a sacred cow or a golden calf. What I wish DeConick would've done (and she might still do it) is talk about Her Master's Tools?: Feminist And Postcolonial Engagements of Historical-Critical Discourse.

How I might respond is by putting up a post soon to get us listening to Jacqueline Jones Royster, which might help us listen to the bible. Royster, the expert in "textual studies (rhetoric, literacy, composition, literature, etc.)" and also the strong, factual "historian."

Can (Black) Men REALLY Be Feminists?

"The black men who contributed to this book overwhelmingly concur that feminism provides benefits in their lives that make them better people. The way they behave now, in private and in public, suggests that they really are feminists. Most of us can gain insights into alternative ways of being through their stories of challenge and change.

As we saw from the narratives of participants in this study, popular notions of masculinity set men against one another and against women, which inevitably leads to conflict and, all too often, violence. Almost any man can identify with the emotionally, spiritually, and even physically crippling effects of that kind of masculinity. Indeed, a system based on male domination is problematic, divisive, and self-destructive for those who seek social justice on behalf of African Americans, and for the good of society as a whole. The experiences these men recount are not entirely confined to African Americans--they occur to men in any patriarchal society, regardless of race, sexuality, or class."
--Aaronette M. White, "Can Black Men Really Be Feminists?"
Ain't I a Feminist?:
African American Men Speak Out

on Fatherhood, Friendship, Forgiveness, and Freedom, page 192.
(HT Samhita Mukhopadhyay, at feministing.com)

"Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. This was a definition of feminism I offered in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center more than 10 years ago [in 1985]. It was my hope that at that time that it would become a common definition everyone would use. I liked this definition because it did not imply that men were the enemy."
--bell hooks, "Feminist Politics: Where We Stand"
Feminism is For Everyone: Passionate Politics, page 1.

"So for the record, I am a feminist. My daughter is, too."
--Leonard Pitts Jr., "Prepare yourselves, readers, for liberal use of the 'F' word"
The Miami Herald

(also linked here)

Explanation

This particular post is not for my non-feminist friends in the same way Carly Simon’s hit “You’re So Vain” was not for James Taylor. Truth be told, I detest targeting an audience.

So put this post in the genre of the little self help books you find in an airport bookstore on the way to a feminism(s) and rhetoric(s) conference, the sort of book, you know, with an intriguing title like “YUP.” “NOPE.” “MAYBE.” A WOMAN’S GUIDE TO GETTING MORE OUT OF THE LANGUAGE OF A MAN, which hits you like a dart in the bullseye in a dark bar somewhere even though you’re a man (and not the target audience) as you think to yourself (anyway) that the two collaborating authors whose front-matter acknowledgments of others compare their writing process to collaborative pregnancy and to the life changing developments of childbirth, using words like “baffling and humbling” and “translating” and “manspeak”—even though they’re men writing about very different language than they’re writing with—may have something for you (a man and not their target) to hear, although you find you haven’t been able to help yourself with much of anything lately, especially not resisting the buying of such paperback poor sellers on the 50% off discount rack which saves you nearly $6.47.5, minus the sales tax of a city and a state government, not your own, of course.

One of my non-feminist friends has wondered whether I’m not humble. And whether I won’t explain to him more clearly the far-out afrafeminist methods in translation.

When I talk about feminist methodologies, immediately the subject of “positions” comes into play. Yes, I know; Jacques Derrida was the original author of Positions (which is the same word in French if with different meanings in English, depending on whether you are Jacques or, a woman, such as, Hélène Cixous). But when I use the English word positions, I’m intending to mean something from or in Greek. But that original Greek is a translation of Aramaic. And who knows for sure, if it’s not Robert Funk and his group of experts knowing, whether the Aramaic is either original or authored in the first place? So I’m talking about the positions that a certain few learner writer translators find themselves in as they try to put in words a parable spoken by their Rav/Reb/Rabbi (i.e., “Teacher”). It’s a rhetorical feminist parable in the Greek. The men learning, especially the one repositioned by the Reb as “Rock,” want to get their Rabbi in the position of explaining more clearly, off to the side, what the meaning is of the far-out story with multiple meanings. The Rav explains: “What do you think you’re asking? If you are in not in a position to hear this story, what makes you think I’ll be able to explain with singular clarity to you any of the other stories? How are you going to get, for yourself – any one of you, the Greek translation of my first word μετανοεῖτε (rethink everything between your ears and behind your eyes!), if you won’t reposition your ears to hear and your eyes to see? How are you going to translate what I have to hear (and learn) from that mixed-breed Greek (Syro-Phonecian) Woman about her man-possessed and Greek deity-possessed little Girl? How are you going to translate what that loose mixed-breed (Samaritan) Woman says to the men about me in their village long before Billy Graham arrives on the scene? How are you going to translate what all those Women (some half-breeds, familiar with males and with Greek deities) say to you after they’ve poured their best perfumes all over my hair and then my body and have washed me from head to foot until they have some living cause to become my first Apostles? Yes, I know you want that position. How are you going to get that much of what you have to hear and learn from Women and me too is How?”

Proposition: Some Fell By The Wayside

A first position for a translator is not feminist at all. The aim of this position is proposition. Plato and Aristotle found this position most useful, which is why they didn’t find the slippery-slick sophists and the plurally-playful poets very useful at all. Which is why Plato said that a word is a shadow but it’s meaning is light. Which is also why Aristotle taught his students to use good Greek, which is not to be translated into the babble of the barbarians (and not to be taught to feeble females either—and so, of course, Aristotle really wouldn’t have cared for such aliteration). Anyway, the text and the original and the author and his logic and his nature are most important. This λόγος is in danger of falling by the wayside.

Imposition: Some Fell on Stony Ground

A second position for a translator is not feminist at all. The aim of this position is imposition. Alexander the Great, one of Aristotle’s disciples, was an imposer. He took Greek culture and language in a dominant way to all the known world (and the only time that fellow cried was when, he thought, there was no one else to conquer). Here, the focus is still on the originally authored text, but the concern is the audience who must be forced to get the text. Now since the conquerer has to target an audience with text, then translation equivalence is most important. He can rename a great city after himself (i.e., Alexandria) and start translating and teaching every text possible in Greek. Barbarian words can be shadows of deep enlightened meanings. The targeted “hoi polloi” (i.e., the masses) will get real prototypical meaningful Greek. The danger here, of course, is that the λόγος forced in so quickly will prematurely wither (stunted by Roman rock and by Judeo-Christian sunshine).

Transposition: Some Fell among Thorns

A third position for a translator is closer to feminist positioning. The aim of this position is transposition. Apostle Paul became a transposer: a cultural relativist and a theological pluralist, all things to all, to win some to Christ. Here’s Paul/Saul: a Roman citizen, a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee inquisitioner blinded for sight, a member of the “true” circumcision who require a half-Greek man to undergo male Jewish circumcision for his other half (“the Jew first, and the Greek”), an instructor of women to be silent when in Greece (though himself silent to the women in Rome where the law kept them silent), a rhetorical opponent of Greek deities in Athens (while a radical proponent of a trinitarian God in Jerusalem), a scholar in Hebrew and presumably Latin who reads and writes copiously in Greek, a prisoner who would ransom and free the slave in the cell with him. The danger with transposition is . . . ; the dangers of transposition are observed by C. S. Lewis in his sermon “Transposition,” about which he writes that “A different version of ‘Transposition,’ written expressly for that purpose and then translated into Italian, has appeared in the Rivista of Milan” and in which he advises us his readers “Let us construct a fable. Let us picture a woman thrown into a dungeon.” The dangers is that a λόγος may miss out on some ἀγάπη because it mixes unrecognizably and inaudibly with such thorns and weeds as these: καὶ πάντες λαλῶσιν γλώσσαις εἰσέλθωσιν δὲ ἰδιῶται ἢ ἄπιστοι οὐκ ἐροῦσιν ὅτι μαίνεσθε.

a(p)position:

Yep. Yep. Here’s a statement for you all,

ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν

Should a grain of wheat not fall into the ground to die, it stays single.

ἐὰν μὴ ὁ κόκκος τοῦ σίτου πεσὼν εἰς τὴν γῆν ἀποθάνῃ αὐτὸς μόνος μένει

Should it fall to die, it delivers many children and many cornucopias.

ἐὰν δὲ ἀποθάνῃ πολὺν καρπὸν φέρει

A fourth position for a translator is afrafeminist. The means and the aims of this position are a(p)position. It’s a lowly position, an uncertain one, with ambiguities. An apposition in English is “A placing side by side or next to each other.” A similar Greek word we transliterate into English as parable: my own subjective story is drawn out by another’s story alongside mine. An a-position is death. End of story.

In English, we can read an x-rated novel by Gayl Jones, an African American, a woman. But much is silent, like the untranslatable “white spaces” Anne Carson speaks of as she translates the fragments of Sappho.

If we’re a white male English scholar, such as Casey Clabough is, reviewing Jones’ book for tenure, then we may astutely observe how other scholars have already had “a whole range of critical reactions” which “constitute a diverse body of critical readings” that have spoken of the “unique sexual episodes and memorable gender characterizations through conscious and specialized political lenses,” which may make us want to focus more specifically on Jones’ own “theoretical standard, the ambitious ‘all-inclusive structure’” by which to judge “various applications of the specific components—psychology, eroticism, history, linguistic play, [and] music.” But if we’re Toni Morrison, we’re likely to say something more like this (which is something Morrison really has said about the text Jones wrote): “What was uppermost in my mind while I read her manuscript was that no novel about any black woman could ever be the same after this. This girl had changed the terms, the definitions of the whole enterprise.” Now, to be sure, Morrison has written more novels about black women, but no one is the same. Not the readers, and not the writers. There is something side by side, there is death, there is life like it’s never been known before. As explicit and as illicit as Jones’ erotic language is, her novel Corregidora must hide the secret of a woman (or several women, or black women in general) while it whispers the secret, the unspeakable. The novel is a story beside your own, whoever you are with eyes to see and ears to hear. If it’s a hiding and a revealing, then it’s also a renewing, and a very personal one.

The reader knows that Corregidora is the male protagonist, the slave owner, and the reader knows this by virtue of his being revealed. Here’s Erica Baumeister’s synopsis of the book: “When Ursa Corregidora is five years old and questions the truth of her great-grandmother's stories, her great-grandmother tells her, ‘I'm leaving evidence. And you got to leave evidence too. And your children got to leave evidence. And when it come time to hold up the evidence, we got to have evidence to hold up. That's why they burned all the papers, so there wouldn't be no evidence to hold up against them.’ Ursa's great-grandmother was raped and then used as a whore by her white slave owner, Corregidora, as was her daughter after her. Ursa had a black father, but her skin more closely resembles the color of Corregidora, the man who is both her grandfather and great-grandfather. Ostracized by darker-skinned women who resent the added value her light skin gives her among black men, and unable to trust any man, black or white, because of the stories she was raised on, Ursa Corregidora sings the blues and fights both the past and the present to maintain mental and physical autonomy. Internal monologues, dreams and remembered stories intermingle with present-day reality until it becomes difficult for the reader or Ursa to draw the lines between them, a task made doubly difficult when black men echo the proprietary attitudes (and sometimes words) of dead slave owners.” Such stories must die. They must end.

But Jones keeps, as if whispered secrets, all the backstory of the Portuguese and Spanish “corrigedore” (masculine gendered form) and “corrigedora” (and feminine gendered form). If it's not part of your grandmother’s story, you don’t get it. Black women (not only the characters but also Jones herself) possess “her” secret and tell it. It’s part of the story of translation that writer historian Jim Tuck tells us: “The term ‘corregidor’ is normally associated with an island in the Philippines that witnessed one of the most dramatic and tragic episodes of the Second World War -- when a starving, outgunned, and outnumbered band of American and Filipino soldiers finally surrendered to a Japanese invasion force after heroic but futile resistance. But how did it come to acquire such a name, which -- quite literally -- means ‘corrector’ in Spanish? The term, it should be noted, referred less to someone who teaches wayward people to cultivate the paths of rectitude than it did to a magistrate in colonial Spain. . . Corregidores were scattered throughout the Spanish domains including, of course, Mexico. One such official was Miguel Domínguez, who exercised that function in Querétaro. But the focus here is not on the corregidor but on his wife, who bore the title of corregidora. As we shall see, this was truly a case where a wife not only wore the pants in the family but where her determination, resourcefulness and drive were able to change history.”

Jones may not know any of this history as told so much more loudly and objectively. Somehow the words have come to her through the passages of stories passed down from mother to mother in hush tones. “. . . to leave evidence . . .” In Portuguese and Spanish languages, corregidor(e/a), is a pun: (1) “corrector” and (2) “corridor.” Jones has heard and has us hear both meanings. The titular male character is given the name in the feminine (not masculine gender) form. First, there is a theme of correction: (a) the titular character needs to be chastised (for the brutal ways he corrects the women around him), and (b) he seeks to have the women correct his ailments, and (c) the women in the book intend to correct their plight of having the historical record destroyed. Second, instead of “making generations” to correct the erasure of the record, the female protagonist Ursa sings improvised blues songs about types of corridors: songs “[a]bout this train going in the tunnel” and “about this bird woman, whose eyes were deep wells” (147). So alongside Jones’ character’s stories are our own (in hush tones, the unspeakable need for transformation).

For afrafeminist translators, the positions are not simply of word proposed, or word imposed, or even word transposed. A word touches the touched body. It doesn’t have to be a spoken word or literary word. Afrafeminist historian Jacqueline Jones Royster knows from experience how a good theory of literacy, even a translation “theory begins with the notion that a community’s material conditions greatly define the range of what [any] group does with the written word, and to a significant degree, even how they do it. . . [as] an expression of self, of society, and of self in society” (page 5, Traces of a Stream). Royster carefully reviews the history of words, and notes: “In the context of these definitions, the space to envision African American women writers emerges. . . African American women have acquired and mastered variously a new tool for a new day. We have done so with an apparently ageless set of tasks, all of which seem to pivot on notions of belief, identity, and social responsibility” (pages 105-07).

So when it comes to Bible translation, a particular interest of the friend I’m writing for here, the word a(p)posed is the afrafeminist method. Why can’t a man use such “an apparently ageless set of tasks, all of which seem to pivot on notions of belief, identity, and social responsibility”? Why can’t Anglo-American women? Why can’t Karen H. Jobes, for instance, insist on two very different texts of the Greek Septuagint Esther, presented side-by-side “where the Greek verb προστίθημι expresses the Hebrew idea ‘to do again’ or ‘keep on going’” ambiguously in one of the texts. And why can’t she translate that one Greek word, also ambiguously, by her English as in “Then she spoke again to the king. . .” (italics added)? And why can’t she then leave the untranslatable white space of the other variant text, and leave that absent word untranslated as against the other—a kind of death, so that there is a differently renewed tone: “Then Esther said to the king on the next day, ‘Allow me to punish my enemies with bloodshed.’ So Queen Esther appealed to the king also against Haman’s children, that they too should die with their father”? And why can’t Suzanne McCarthy question the single and masculine meaning imposed on ἄνθρωπος when it’s been translated to Greek already also as ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ. . . αὐτούς? Any why can’t Carolyn Custis James translate various Hebrew words as having more meanings than those men have given them, so that we all can hear our own stories alongside the one in which the man Boas hears and learns from the woman Ruth, an act of translation itself? Won't that kind of explanation (of λόγος) change us?

Pike's Pickles

I’m not a black woman, and neither is Kenneth L. Pike. (We’re Euro-American men). His theory (as methodology) is not WOWOLFOL either, although it really is afrafeminism dressed up a little bit differently. (WOWOLFOL is Pike’s little joke that he ends one of the prefaces of one of his books with, and what I’ll end this post with. But now I’ll explain afrafeminism and Pike’s methods and then get to a few of Pike's pickles).

To translate Aristotle’s Rhetoric into English, I’m using afrafeminist methods. Specifically, I’m using Patricia Bizzell’s conception of research “methodology” that she (although not black herself either) finds in the “four-part ‘afrafeminist ideology’” of Jacqueline Jones Royster (who is African American). Royster’s four emphases (and Pike’s) are as follows:

1) “careful analysis” (from page 279ff of Royster’s Traces of a Stream, which in Chapter 1 on page 9 of Pike’s Linguistic Concepts sounds like this: “While working with data, all scholars from time to time utilize parts of various underlying theories, not just one. . . In publication, on the other hand, a scholar often, but not always, presents all of [the] conclusions from just one viewpoint. Logical consistency may appear . . . to be desirable in the presentation of results, even if it is impossible during the stages in which the data are being found and analyzed.”)

2) “acknowledgment of passionate attachment” (from Royster’s page 280, which in Pike’s Chapter 2 on page 10 goes this way: “No statement can be made seriously unless preceding it there is in the speaker’s thoughts an underlying set of beliefs which [s]he holds firmly, but cannot prove. Ordinary statements and theoretical [and methodological] statements share this restriction. In some sense, [wo]man cannot begin with known facts; [s]he has to begin with some kind of commitment, such as the commitment to believe in the existence of facts or the possibility of obtaining knowledge at all.”)

3) “attention to ethical action” requiring us researchers to be “accountable to our various publics” (from Royster’s pages 280 and 281, which in Pike’s Chapter 14 on page 127 is put similarly as so: “So we are at a very high level of coherence of . . . human being[s] in [our] joking, or lying, [our] fears and [our] hates, [our] biograph[ies] or [our] social immersion[s], [our] explicit assumptions or [our] unstated but controlling beliefs. Beyond the pure mathematician in [her or] his abstractions lies person in commitment to the sheer joy of the pattern chase. We too can have fun together, searching for evidence that the [woman or] man in the street—not just the professional of some kind—is tacitly aware of, and exploits for pleasure, such ‘universes’ accessible to [her or to] him.”)

4) “commitment to social responsibility” (from Royster’s page 281, which is stated on Pike’s page 131 this way: All people in “all cultures must talk about many items which are related to their survival. In all cultures people must eat to live. All cultures must recruit new members. All must have role differentiation, communication, shared cognitive orientations and goals, and regulation of disruptive behavior, as well as means of socialization—that is, the induction of an individual into the roles and subsystems of the society [see Aberle et al. 1950]. It is reliance on these factors which makes it practical for . . . person[s] to assume, when [they visit] a culture which has a language which has never been written . . ., to assume that it will be a normal or ordinary language . . ., and to assume that [they] can find shared bridges of behavior over which [they] can pass to learn it. And it is these facts which have allowed me for many years to be willing to try in an hour, in public, to start learning a language by gesture only [that is, in monolingual demonstration, without using English or any other language shared by the other party to the demonstration].”)

Note how Pike, in 4 above, learns from others their language in their language (not his). Now, note something similar Bizzell says about Royster (on page 16 of her article):

“As Royster notes, her techniques are “quite recognizably interdisciplinary and feminist (257); she also characterizes them as a sort of ethnographic research in which she was unable to interview her subject, because most of them were already dead (see 282). These techniques enabled her, as she says, to explore how “knowledge, experience, and language merge” in the lives of her research subjects (259). The point I wish to emphasize is that she thus generates scholarly knowledge that clearly could be developed no other way. . . [Royster has] had to adopt radically new methods as well [as using traditional ones, although the new are] methods which violate some of the most cherished conventions of academic research, most particularly in bringing the person of the researcher, [his or] her body, [his or] her emotions, and dare one say, [his or] her soul into the work.”

Sounds like Pike (again as he opens his Preface and the Introduction on page xi and page 3): “In this volume person (and relation between persons) is given theoretical priority above formalism, above pure mathematics, above idealized abstractions. A person, as observer, has choice.” And “The theory [of any person] is part of the observer; a different theory makes a different observer; a different observer sees different things, or sees the same things as structured differently; and the structure of the observer must, in some sense or degree, be part of the data of an adequate theory of language. A particular language, of a particular culture, in relation to a particular person with [her or] his particular history constitutes an implicit theory for that person. . . [T]he observer universally affects the data and becomes part of the data.”

Let’s be clear about another similarly between Pike and Royster in their methodologies. They both write against inadequate methodologies (traditional methods that, by insisting on cold objectivity which resists subjectivity, are reductionistic and inadequate and, I’ll add, are elitist and exclusionary as a consequence).

Pike’s Pickles

But now I want to get to some of Pike’s pickles. (Pickles as in “that put him in a pickle.”) When I was in his seminar on “Tagmemics” (which is his name for his theory), and when he had some of us over to his house for dinner, and when I hear about him from those who knew him better than I (including one of his former bosses who, of all things, now works for me which puts me in the very weird position of being Pike’s boss’s boss), then sometimes he’d express a few things that bothered him. He expressed concern that these things were problems for tagmemics.

Some of them are these:

Pike’s Pickle A)
There was the disagreement Pike had with anthropologist Marvin Harris, who used “emic and etic all wrong.” A bit later, Pike agreed to the now famous public debate with Harris on the issue. (I never told Pike, but I always thought the more interesting disagreement was the one of Claude Levi-Strauss, who thought that Pike should have used “etic” for “emic” and vice versa, and then Gudrun and Lars H. Ekstrand came along and substantiated the Levi-Straussian claim with ancient Greek uses of the suffixes that Pike derives his terms from. Anyway, I never told Pike that I actually kind of liked Harris’s uses of “emic” and “etic”; so I’ll tell you now that I really love that the words have been found in scores of disciplines in a plethora of languages by various researchers, practitioners, and teachers.) The difficult thing for Pike here is that he wants subjectivity but is tempted to pure objectivity. (Some reading this may be tempted to think that Pike gave in, to pure abstraction for his meaning and not to Harris. But you may want to read more of what Pike says in all of this before making a final judgment. Pike never, as far as I can tell, ever backed off from his conviction that person is above logic, and that the observing person changes both the person himself or herself and the observed by their observation).

Pike’s Pickle B)
There was the disagreement Pike had with postmodernists and particularly their deconstructionism. Some poetry he authored rightly fought for author’s rights. And he defended his friends whose work was the victim of deconstruction. The difficult thing for Pike is that he wants to put person above the logic on which modernism is based, and his method would look very much like postmodernism if it weren’t, like afrafeminism, based on the subjective perspectives of humans who live in a body. In other words, postmodernism and especially deconstruction for Pike descended into pure abstraction (which may be where someone like Jacques Derrida says we must live, so thank God for Helene Cixous).

Pike’s Pickle C)
There was the question Pike often asked some of us about whether we thought IPA (the International Phon-etic Alphabet) was a kind of “emics,” a sort of insider language if used etically to be outside while going in. This is quite technical, I know, and the technicalities and the technical-ness will bring us to Pike’s next pickle; but first this. Pike would do the “monolingual demonstrations” mentioned in 4) above; and he would try to use the language of the other person only. He would actually agree that he was using the other languageS of the other person, because with the actual words spoken, the two—Pike and the one whose language he was learning—would also gesture and assume friendliness between the two (the friendliness an explicit “set up” arranged by a mutual friend so that there’d be no meanness, no sarcasm, no intentional resistance, and so forth). And yet, Pike also used IPA to record all he heard, and he’d use an English gloss, and he’d map out sounds on a grid mirroring the points of articulation within the mouth, and he’d map out morphophonemic contrasts, and he’d map out grammar contrasts, and he’d map out syntax. Then the two language speakers would debrief in English for the sake of the larger audience. So Pike used his various languages. And because he did, he could not completely—purely—move from his own “outsider” (or etic) position towards the other’s own “insider” (or emic) position. Rather, and this was his pickle, his etics were often (or perhaps always? he would ask us) just more emics. For anyone who has yet to learn IPA, for instance, is really in the etic position for that “etic alphabet” but becomes an insider using an “emic alphabet” once IPA was learned. So Pike mused, rightly, about intermediary stages of insiderness and outsiderness, and whether the whole notion of emic and etic really turns, again, on where one stands.

Pike’s Pickle D)
There was the question about whether tagmemics would be adopted across disciplines and live on. Pike really wanted the theory to be understood and used as a meta-theory (or as Joe Kissell calls it “the linguistic theory of everything”). He did not want it to be deconstructed or deconstructable as a metanarrative must be (although he seems to allow for that when writing on page 7 of Linguistic Concepts: “All theories eventually are doomed to be outmoded.”) The “Tagmemics” seminar I was in with him only had two of us who were linguists; the others, all hand picked, were experts or professionals in different disciplines and were women and men of various races. And much earlier, Pike had already been writing for publication in the fields of rhetoric and composition. Within linguistics, his wife, his sister, and some of his friends had begun to apply tagmemics in various directions. Thus, this was not just a theory for linguistics, for translation, and particularly for Bible translation. But unfortunately, I hear that in the Bible translation organizations in which Pike worked, tagmemics in not in vogue. Moreover, it’s all but abandoned in composition and rhetoric (and I’ve written some about this as I started into comp/rhet as an outsider).

So to summarize pickles A, B, C, and D: They are the logical objectification of A) meanings of words and of B) an author’s rights and of C) an observer’s position and of D) tagmemics itself. Every time logic rises above person, there’s a problem (and the formal complexities of tagmemics, even its technical name, has led to its abandonment in places where it once had promise). I do think Pike would be pleased to see that, despite its disappearance from Bible translation work and from rhetoric and composition, tagmemics is alive and well for Allison Randal, Larry Wall, and other Perl people. The reason they are so successful is that they keep person above logic in a field where logic usually reigns supreme (namely “computer science” and “computer language”). So I’m arguing here that afrafeminists like Jacqueline Jones Royster is keeping person above logic. And that we scholars will do well in our 1) “careful analysis” of anything and particularly of anyone else, to acknowledge our 2) “passionate attachment” while 3) we pay close “attention to ethical action” that might require us to be “accountable to our various publics” as we make our “commitment to social responsibility.” Now, I understand that may be beginning to sound a bit technical all over again. So let’s end with the end of Pike’s Preface and that joke:

“With that behind us [namely the scholarly developments of Pike and Pike in tagmemics], I then return to the present book, seeking once more to try to write for an audience which might be interested in the general principles involved. I wish them enjoyment as they try to read it. They may have to struggle with some of the data and claims, of course, since the view presented may seem to be buried in some irrelevant way. But this may often be the price of pleasure. Suppose, for example, that one wants to know the analysis of

WOWOLFOL

It may take a bit of study to see that it hides a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Home Training: Rhetorical (Hellenist-Roman-Afra) Feminism

SEXISM

Julius Ceasar was a sexist man, as William Shakespeare portrays him. (See “Making a Woman and Other Institutionalized Diversions,” by Jeanne Addison Roberts and “O, what men dare do” by Anthony Sampson).

And generally men in ancient Rome were chauvanists, according Cheryl Glenn: “A particular point of Roman male pride seems to have been the deliberate exclusion of women from civil and public duties” (See Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance page, 61).

FEMINISM

But we must retell this history, a bit more, a bit differently. First, the facts we all know (from the cradle):

Julius Caesar was born to Gaius Caesar, the patrician, and to Aurelia Cotta, the plebian. The baby boy was born after two girls, Julia Caesaris the Elder and Julia Caesaris the Younger.

The historical facts show that Aurelia Cotta perfectly fulfilled the Roman “ideal of the domina, of the strong privatized woman” (Glenn 72). Aurelia Cotta was “very influential in her son’s upbringing and security” while her husband “was often away.” Thus, the “historian Tacitus, considers her as an ideal Roman matron and thinks highly of her. Plutarch describes her as a ‘strict and respectable’ woman. Highly intelligent, independent and renowned for her beauty and common sense, Aurelia was held in high regard throughout Rome” (See her history being written at Wikipedia.)

HINTS OF HELLENIST-ROMAN-AFRA RHETORICAL FEMINISM

But we must retell this story a bit more, and quite a bit differently. Second, the earliest factual accounts we tend to overlook (to the grave):

Julius Caesar had the presence of mind to speak and act when he was assassinated. Let’s review then rewind from Shakespeare’s (16 century A.D.) version of what he said:

“Et tu, Brute? Then fall Caesar!”

Let’s go back to and then beyond snippets of Plutarch’s (1st century A.D.) version (and of the 20th century A.D. English translations) of what he said and did:

πρῶτος δὲ Κάσκας ξίφει παίει παρὰ τὸν αὐχένα πληγὴν οὐ θανατηφόρον οὐδὲ βαθεῖαν, ἀλλ’ ὡς εἰκὸς ἐν ἀρχῇ τολμήματος μεγάλου ταραχθείς, ὥστε καὶ τὸν Καίσαρα μεταστραφέντα τοῦ ἐγχειριδίου λαβέσθαι καὶ κατασχεῖν.

It was Casca who gave him the first blow with his dagger, in the neck, not a mortal would, nor even a deep one, for which he was too much confused, as was natural at the beginning of a deed of great daring; so that Caesar turned about, grasped the knife, and held it fast.

ἅμα δέ πως ἐξεφώνησαν, ὁ μὲν πληγεὶς Ῥωμαϊστί· „μιαρώτατε Κάσκα, τί ποιεῖς;“ ὁ δὲ πλήξας Ἑλληνιστὶ πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφόν· „ἀδελφέ, βοήθει“.

At almost the same instant both cried out, the smitten man in Latin: "Accursed Casca, what does thou?" and the smiter, in Greek, to his brother: "Brother, help!"

διὸ καὶ Βροῦτος αὐτῷ πληγὴν ἐνέβαλε μίαν εἰς τὸν βουβῶνα. λέγεται δ’ ὑπό τινων, ὡς ἄρα πρὸς τοὺς ἄλλους ἀπομαχόμενος καὶ διαφέρων δεῦρο κἀκεῖ τὸ σῶμα καὶ κεκραγώς, ὅτε Βροῦτον εἶδεν ἐσπασμένον τὸ ξίφος, ἐφειλκύσατο κατὰ τῆς κεφαλῆς τὸ ἱμάτιον καὶ παρῆκεν ἑαυτόν, εἴτ’ ἀπὸ τύχης εἴθ’ ὑπὸ τῶν κτεινόντων ἀπωσθεὶς πρὸς τὴν βάσιν ἐφ’ ἧς ὁ Πομπηΐου βέβηκεν ἀνδριάς.

Therefore Brutus also gave him one blow in the groin. And it is said by some writers that although Caesar defended himself against the rest and darted this way and that and cried aloud, when he saw that Brutus had drawn his dagger, he pulled his toga down over his head and sank, either by chance or because pushed there by his murderers, against the pedestal on which the statue of Pompey stood.

Let’s now read what the Roman historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus writes (in our earliest 1st century account, with a later 20th century translation):

Atque ita tribus et viginti plagis confossus est uno modo ad primum ictum gemitu sine voce edito, etsi tradiderunt quidam Marco Bruto irruenti dixisse: καὶ σὑ τὲκνον;

And in this wise he was stabbed with three and twenty wounds, uttering not a word, but merely a groan at the first stroke, though some have written that when Marcus Brutus rushed at him, he said in Greek, “You too, my child?”

Now, let’s reconsider.

What if Julius Caesar’s dying words were not Latin (as Shakespeare and Plutarch have suggested)?

What if, in the Hellenist language, Caesar said to Brutus (as the Latin-writing but then Hellenist-alphabet writing-historian Suetonius reports from his other earlier sources): καὶ σὑ τὲκνον?

Where would Julius have gotten those Hellenist utterances? Who would have trained him so viscerally in this other mother tongue?

HOME TRAINING

So we retell this a bit more, a good bit differently. Third, then, here are some things we do well to hear (feminist rhetorics of resistance):

Aurelia Cotta was the trainer of those in her home. She was the mother of Julia Caesaris the Elder, Julia Caesaris the Younger, and Gaius Julius Caesar. She was the bodily present parent. She was the plebian parent (not one of the patricians, like her husband). She told stories. She was educated. She read Homer, Hesiod, and Sappho, and spoke the Hellenist tongue.

It is not too far fetched to imagine Aurelia Cotta reading the Illiad in her home place. It is likely to have been some act of resistance. Resistance to being silenced, as a woman, as a plebian, as a mother, in Rome! (Glenn reminds us here that:

Because the Romans clung to the ideal of the domina, of the strong privatized woman, they [i.e., the Roman men] often reacted with perplexity or disgust at the women who pursued intellectual or political aspirations. Unlike the very few Greek women who found acceptance and admiration in the public domain, no Roman woman seems to have succeeded in establishing herself as a public figure in her own right. [72])

It is not too difficult to think that little Julius hears his mother's Hellenistic words of resistance profoundly. He hears them as the Hellenist hero Achilles, the son, hears them from his own mother, Thetis. (James J. Murphy says little Roman boys profoundly learned lots of Hellenistic rhetoric: "The young lad who begins with a simple fable of Aesop ends up years later as a young adult doing the same thing with a complex speech of Demosthenes . . ." [61]. Feminist history explains the role of the mothers).

Listen as if to Aurelia Cotta reading and reciting to her children the Hellenist words of Thebis to her child (from the Illiad, Book 1, Line 414):

τὸν δ' ήμεἰβετ' ἐπειτα Θέτις κατά δάκρυ χἐουσα:
Thetis answered him then letting the tears fall: 'Ah me,

ὥ μοι τἐκνον ἐμὸν, τἰ νὑ σ' ἐτρεφον αἰνά τεκοῦσα;
my child. Your birth was bitterness. Why did I raise you?

It is not impossible that “ὥ μοι τἐκνον ἐμὸν” [“ah me, my child”] is heard and heard and recited and recited and spoken again by young Julius. So it is not impossible that “καὶ σὑ τὲκνον” [“and you? child”] rolls off the tongue of the dying man, Julius Caesar. He is a son who repeatedly heard his parent, his mother. When a dying man, as a parent (perhaps even the parent of Brutus) he now identifies with and repeats the words of his mother, those words of Thetis, who was (also) betrayed by a son.

I am not trying to suggest that Julius Caesar was not sexist. Or that ancient Roman (or Greek) men generally were not chauvinists.

Rather, I am hoping to show that such simple categorizations of ancient men hardly shows the profound impact of ancient women on such boys and men (from cradle to grave). The impact is in the rhetorics these women found and used.

HOMEGROWN FEMINIST RHETORICS

(Feminist) rhetorician, Patricia Bizzell, praises the “afrafeminist ideology” of Jacqueline Jones Royster as good “feminist rhetorical methodology.” And Royster says the following as she wonders how non-African American scholars can so speak for her, an African American woman (in her article, "When the First Voice You Hear is Not Your Own"):

People in the neighborhood where I grew up would say, “Where is their home training?” Imbedded in the question is the idea that when you visit other people’s “home places,” especially when you have not been invited, you simply can not go tramping around the house like you own the place, no matter how smart you are, or how much imagination you can muster, or how much authority and entitlement outside that home you may be privileged to hold. (32)

bell hooks, another Afrafeminist, puts it this way (in "Homeplace: a Site of Resistance"):

Throughout our history, African-Americans have recognized the subversive value of homeplace, of having access to private space where we do not directly encounter white racist agression. Whatever the shape and direction of black liberation struggle (civil rights reform or black power movement), domestic space has been a crucial site for organizing, for forming political solidarity.

In our young minds houses belonged to women, were their special domain, not as property, but as places where all that truly mattered in life took place—the warmth and comfort of shelter, the feeding of our bodies, the nurturing of our souls. There we learned dignity, integrity of being; there we learned to have faith. The folks who made this life possible, who were our primary guides and teachers, were black women . . . [who fostered] a radical political dimension . . . [and who created] a site of resistance and liberation struggle (47).

I shall never forget the sense of shared history, of common anguish, I felt when first reading about the plight of black women domestic servants in South Africa, black women domestic servants in South Africa, black women laboring in white homes. Their stories evoked vivid memories of our African-Amerocian past. . .

I want to remember these black women today. The act of remembrance is a conscious gesture honoring their struggle, their effort to keep something for their own. I want us to respect and understand that this effort has been and continues to be a radically subversive political gesture. For those who dominate and oppress us benefit most when we have nothing to give our own, when they have so taken from us our dignity, our humaness that we have nothing left, no “homeplace” where we can recover ourselves. I want us to remember these black women today, both past and present. (42-43)

Let's make the connections, between women (Africans, African Americans, Hellenists [goddesses and humans] and Romans) and men. How profound our histories, our passionate bodily rhetoric of memory:

Aurelia Cotta bore and raised Julius Caesar. But most later (merely sexist, even "feminist") histories have him simply living and dying as a sexist.

What gets missed in such historying (i.e., historiography) is the Hellenist-Roman-Afra-feminism of Aurelia Cotta and of the Hellenist Thebis that influenced Caesar to his dying words. His words, because of his mother's rhetorical influence, have him, at the very end, identifying with the pain, and the loss, of a mother.

Feminist retelling of feminist rhetorics (such as that of Sappho, of Aurelia Cotta, of Laura Cereta, of Christine de Pizan, of Cheryl Glenn, of Patricia Bizzell, of bell hooks, and of Jacqueline Jones Royster's) indicate the power of the woman. The woman's power is in resistance. Her power is in rhetorically telling and retelling histories more fully, with our profound identification with the pain, and the loss, of a mother separated from her child. The ultimate uttered response to such betrayal runs deep in boys and men and girls and women trained in her home place.