Thinking about the American West means considering the ecological and geological terrain in terms of various interpretations, some of them positive, some of them negative -- some of them aware of the people, some of them intent on destroying the people. Some of them imposing one kind of governance and others determined to control governance to their own advantage. Much of this comes out of the schism reinforced by the war between the states and -- farther back -- the forces that empowered the revolution, separation from England and all its history, a wave of people coming to the American continent as powerful as the present wave of people moving from Central America to North America.
This dynamic process is not commonly recognized, partly because it's too recent to be digested (the prairie clearances cluster around 1850) and partly because the Industrial Revolution and the formation of boundaries (both states and nation) confuse and complexify everything. But they also explain it. In terms of warfare, horses and guns. In terms of resources, railroads and mines.
I want to reflect on the terms of rhetoric.the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques. On-going posts are needed.
Definitions from Google, one positive and one negative:
1. the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques.
Synonyms: oratory, eloquence, command of language, expression, delivery, diction.
2. language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect on its audience, but often regarded as lacking in sincerity or meaningful content."all we have from the Opposition is empty rhetoric"
Synonyms: bombast, loftiness, turgidity, grandiloquence, ornateness, portentuousness, pomposity, boastfulness, bragging, hyperbole, purple prose, sonorousness.
The "doubleness" is an effective source exemplified by dissenting elements of society, so they say something is "sick" or "wicked" to mean the opposite -- that it is good and effective. Something said in one sense can mean the reverse, so context including the source of the words, the accompanying talk, the nature of the occasion, all need to provide context for how to take the word. Words are like money in the sense of dollar bills -- they are meant to indicate value but they can mean the equivalent in gold, or a relationship to the money of other nations, or nothing but being a piece of printed paper.
Note that the source is a nation, often defined as well by its spoken language. These are symbolisms, means of exchange, historically developed. But in this century, given the internet breaking the hegemony of nations, we've tried to escape regulation by the standing order of corrupt patriarchs. Bitcoin and the like are experimenting. Some mega-corporations are trying to invent their own money. Company towns and smaller governments in emergencies have tried to use "script", little more than IOU's.
Words are like that. Witness the recent ruckus over the Dior perfume named "Sauvage" and marketed by a movie star who enjoys being on the edge, ambiguous, challenging the standing order. No one really knows what the formula smells like. Depp combines images of stereotypical indigeneity with the kind of child/sexiness of Michael Jackson/Epstein glamour as in his fantasy movies or the presumed tropical ease of his owned island. I say this in the rhetoric derived from a Div School post-grad education and reading. It's a little negative: diagnostic, patronizing, but trying to take a larger view.
Nations defend their languages which means their rhetoric. The terms for the indigenous peoples of America are a huge morass of negative (particularly in adversarial circumstances) and positive (for those who love romance and sentiment) with tangles of definition and reference. Personal experience, political goals, historical written words from various sources -- all of them interact and confuse.
To some "savauge" means -- in a pejorative that makes tribal bad-asses whisper -- "blanket ass Indians." The ones people call uneducated, primitive, etc. Even animals, because the insecure people using this rhetoric are preoccupied with being the top, the ultimate humans who in Christian terms were created by a big patriarch in the sky. Clearly those who doubt their own status are particularly attached to the word "savage".
Savages, besides being portrayed as incredibly powerful warriors who required an even more brave and disciplined Cavalry to defeat them, are labeled "sub-human" like Trump talking about immigrants. This is far from the massacres of helpless unarmed and displaced peoples that a cavalry fortified with booze and howitzers did impose. Even today Obama haters like to point out how uneven it is to deploy armed predator drones on people who are not necessarily enemies, including their children. The idea is that they are dangerously savage. That's what much of the clearance of the prairie was like -- murder, not war.
Savage can mean untamed emotion, like reading the above and feeling savage about it. But like every heightened arousal, it can link to sex. Wartime rape is notorious. The lasting association is seduction by dark people like Valentino. Thus the sex and gender of the women on Twitter who were most passionate about a perfume named "Sauvage" were in two groups: young sexy women who both enjoy and deny their attraction and old feminists bent on domination. The luxury of it counts.
The conversation soon established that whatever mystical and delightful qualities the term "sauvage" might have in France -- which was dubious -- but that in Quebec the word is so common an insult that it is used in sports against an opposing team. This is complicated because Anglo elements sneer at the French people who sometimes have a lesser social status, marking them as dumb and inept. But "French" has also carried the connotation of high thought, elegance, and seduction.
Back to the American West. My multi-syllabic, Latinate, over-educated rhetoric is meant to be radically inclusive rather than choosing one culture and its ensuing rhetoric over another. This is not an achievement but an aspiration. It also means it's hard for folks to understand what the hell I'm talking about. I want to include Cormac McCarthy's obscenity and violence as well as the sentiments of "My Friend Flicka", the reality of indigenous sex-workers (where's the book? "Laughing Boy?") with the elevated romance of "Riders of the Purple Sage". I won't turn away even from porn. which contains many rhetorics.
Sorting the rhetoric of any real demographic from those trying to form a new vision of their transforming identity is an impossible but worthy enterprise. It's impossible because the reality is so complex that it seizes and changes words. We can barely hope to keep up. I haven't even mentioned the technical jargon of the accoutrements and procedures -- surcingles and parfleches, gumbo and two tracks, Navy Colts and Bowie knives. All that technical geology.
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