I found both the Jarratt/Ong and Glenn readings stimulating to further research and discussion of the contributions of women to classical rhetoric.
Jarratt and Ong quoted Wood: "Nevertheless, it remains a remarkable feature of Greek history that the position of women seems to have declined as the democracy evolved, . . ." I think that women's position declined as democracy grew because men did not want to share power with women and ensured that they would not have to do so. In our own country, women did not receive the right to vote until the 19th amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1920.
Glenn mentions that Aspasia's "contributions later directed through a powerful, gendered lens to both refract and reflect Socrates and Pericles, rather than herself." We know that women were denied citizenship and even recognition of full status as a human being in that society. I find it curious these attitudes prevailed in a city named for a goddess.
I am also intrigued by the speech Plato gives through Aspasia in Menexenus: "For as a woman proves her motherhood by giving milk to her young ones . . . , so did this our land prove that she was the mother of men . . . . for the woman in her conception and generation is but the imitation of the earth, and not the earth of the woman." Here we see homage to Mother Earth, Earth as a female figure who is honored. Yet, female humans did not receive the same appreciation. in ancient Greece.
The quotation from Plutarch - referring to how history is written can distort truth - opening the Jarratt/Ong article is echoed in Glenn's Introduction when she writes: "Why, then, should we continue to write histories of rhetoric when both writing and history are suspect?"
I find Aspasia interesting for several reasons - being a woman rhetorician as well as an educated foreigner who was accepted into Athenian society somewhat beyond what I assume was the norm of most native women, and a businesswoman who opened her own academy for girls and a salon - not a "brothel," as Glenn notes - that attracted the male rhetoricians and philosophers. I hope that there will be further research that will give us more insight into her contributions and how she navigated a society so closed to women.
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I am also looking forward to learning more about Aspasia and her rhetorical positions and influences. I held my breath during the first section of Glenn’s introduction. Even though I am still (after all these years!) shocked and saddened by the silence of women in the development of canonical “intellectual traditions—literary, poetic, scientific, historical, [and] political,” I do not want women fictionally entered into the annals of any history. I understand that no “charting of historical maps…can ever tell the truth,” and I agree with Glenn’s citation of Carroll Smith-Rosenberg that we must continue to tell the “stories”—the intellectual legacy of women, no matter how marginalized, needs to be recovered. But, regardless of how much I may be inculcated in the patriarchal definition of history, I do not want to simply invent women and insert them into what we define as “history.” Glenn’s approach seems grounded (so far) and I like especially her justification that Socrates is a legitimate and privileged creator of knowledge systems even though we have none of his original writing and know of him solely through others.
Jarratt and Ong’s essay on Aspasia begins to fill in the gaps but I am still interested in looking at Glenn’s approach to her recovery. I also want to learn more about Scott’s work on “gender as an analytical category in history,” because I do not understand fully the difference between feminism and gender studies. I understand gender as a performative act, but have difficulty applying this to historical undertakings.
I agree that Aspasia is an interesting character to explore. It certainly seems like there is more to her than first thought. I liked Helen’s comment about Jarratt/Ong being concerned with the truth of history. This is certainly a trend and main point in this discussion—how much of Aspasia’s history was distorted by the negative opinion of women in antiquity, and how much is it being distorted now in the effort to revive her significance?
I found a potentially dangerous idea in the Glenn reading where she states that “Our first obligation, then, as scholars is to look backwards at all the unquestioned rhetorical scholarship that has come before.” Yes, it is probably a good idea to re-examine some of the theories, and there is always room for new interpretations, but Glenn does not put any limits on this statement. The fact that Aspasia was overlooked for so long also brings insight into the culture surrounding her in her own time as well as ours. A historical re-write would destroy just as much as it would uncover.
In connection to our wiki on Greek terms, I found several comments/definitions on rhetoric in these texts. Mostly, I found these statements focused on inclusive ideas, meant to put rhetoric in a broader context, rather than the exclusive defining we have dealt with before now. Part of this was to try and re-define the role of women in rhetoric, but I found this a refreshing change. Scholars have been hunting for the one true definition of rhetoric, and have mainly concluded that there isn’t one, but then lament that rhetoric is a dying art limited to obscure areas of academia. The broadening inclusiveness of rhetoric in these articles bring a change to that, which in turn might help rhetoric become recognized as important again.
I may receive a lot of fire for this post, but perhaps such a response illustrates the importance of recognizing what can be adequately said or inferred about Aspasia as a human being and as a rhetor.
Jarratt/Ong seems to "create" Aspasia from classical references: on page 10, we are told that "Aspasia left no written remains. She is known through a handful of references, the most substantial of which are several paragraphs of narrative in Plutarch's life of Pericles and an oration attributed to her in Plato's dialogue _Menexenus_." Perhaps we should qualify this claim by saying that we have sources that refer to Aphasia--we don't really _know_ her due to the inevitable temporal, historical, and philosophical (perhaps "interpretive" might cover everything) gaps/limits through which Plutarch and Plato wrote (much like other depicted figures such as Pericles in Thucydides or Socrates in the Platonic dialogues).
Plutarch (or the Everyman translation I am reading from) states that "Aspasia, some say, was courted and caressed by Pericles upon account of her knowledge and skill in politics. Socrates himself would sometimes go to visit her, and some of his acquaintance with him [. . .]. And in Plato's Menexenus, though we do not take the introduction as quite serious, still thus much seems to be historical, that she had the repute of being resorted to by many of the Athenians for instruction in the art of speaking (Plutarch 248-249). To me, the qualifications such as "some say" or "much seems to be" allow for some caution in how quickly we are to accept Plutarch's depiction of Aspasia (and this perhaps shows the caution he took in utilizing whatever "sources" he used). Jarratt/Ong seem to accept that how Plutarch and others wrote about Aspasia is actually how she was; on pages 12-13, for example, the paragraphs describing her life with Pericles in Athens are written as if they were true: "Aspasia appeared in Athens . . .", "She taught the art of rhetoric to many, including Socrates, and may have invented the Socratic method" (Jarratt 13). What is the source for this claim?--Plutarch doesn't note this direct link to her pedagogical/rhetorical dialogue with Socrates.
As for Plato's use of Aspasia, I also have skepticism regarding Jarratt/Ong's thematic conclusions. As we have noted in class with the character of Socrates, it is debatable whether Plato is always actually trying to portray S. as he was, as opposed to being a vehicle for Plato's own theoretical musings. Jarratt/Ong begin their discussion of Aspasia's rhetorical ability by stating "[information] about Aspasia's expertise is slim but engrossing. Plutarch reports that Socrates visited Aspasia alone and with others [. . .] We can _imagine_ situations such as those Plato often created in his dialogues about the sophists [my italics]" (Jarratt/Ong 14). Doesn't Carol Poster warn of this tendency of readers of Plato to take the situations/characters/ideas within the dialogues too literally? Another point, which perhaps may not be very important, is that we do not have a great deal of contextual information regarding the entirety of the Menexenus: how does the epitaph of Aspasia fit into the entire dialogue (not just the sections where Socrates apparently speaks admiringly of his rhetorical tutelage under her)?
Again, I could be VERY wrong in critiquing J/O's view of Aspasia, but at least this might allow for discussion (and for me, improvement in how I read and interpret, which is always needed).
Jeremy's thoughts will be echoed by Gale next week. It's certainly true that we know Aspasia only from references to her. But it's also true that we know Socrates only from references to him. He left no writing; and as with Aspasia, Socrates words (more abundant than Aspasia's) are attributions, inventions. So we might ask ourselves why, even though we are cautious in saying, "Socrates did/said" and cautious about saying "Plato thinks," we can be uncomfortable with the idea of an historical Aspasia and comfortable with a similarly shadowy historical Socrates--to the extent that Western culture has assigned to Socrates his own brand of dialogue. To push it further, we could say that Plato is an amazing fiction writer who has miraculously made us believe that a character in his fiction unproblematically stands in for some ancient "reality." Similarly we know Pericles' famous funeral oration through Thucydides, who (it is generally acknowledged) re-invented speeches in the course of developing an historiographical style. We attribute to Pericles the delivery of the speech--even though its composing situation is poorly documented.
See my next launch post for what I think Jarratt-Ong are doing or perhaps trying to do but not entirely succeeding.
Detangling the personality/persona of a long-dead person is notoriously difficult. Conjecture, honestly admitted or not, tends to be the refuge of historians as they attempt to make interesting commentary on a figure that they feel some degree of empathy with, and naturally as a function of 'getting to know' a historical figure. Some of us make friends out of our books.
Oh, hell, we're English majors. We all make friends out of our books.
All of this is to say that conjecture on Aspasia is, to my mind, no fundamentally different than conjecture on Socrates.
There are a number of reasons that I think (and I stress, this is my opinion) that we are discomforted by Aspasia. Perhaps we have been raised with so much more exposure to Socraplatle (three guys, one toga; my thanks to Shea for the term and definition) and so many more of those ideas have been taken up by our culture that it is easy to view conjecture about him/them as a more justified field than it may be. Certainly the scholarship therein takes up shelves on shelves in the library.
I think, sometimes, that it boils down to the idea that democracy for us (this is changing into something the ancient Athenians would have been more comfortable with) and fairness are a greatly unexamined concept. We tend (as a nation) to assume that the question of who gets to speak and get listened to is solved for everyone. We also assume that everyone is given a more or less equal chance to improve themselves (the ol' bootstrap principle.) After all, aren't there specialists and laws to take care of just that? To play the devil's advocate, if I am not a specialist, why would I need to look out after something that does not involve me? I'd probably just mess it up somehow.
And after post-modernism, don't we all assume singular meaning is not the necessary function of any artifact, whether written or not? I said the other day that post-modernism had been a friend to feminism, and it has, but it has also subjected feminism to a slightly unfair standard of generating content. Feminism has critiqued patriarchial systems of thought (of which, no matter how you slice the phrase, 'brotherhood of man' or 'aristocracy of talent,' Socraplatle belongs to) for the exclusion of half the population and their contributions from generating much save the occasional, exceptional (and therefore suspect) woman and a whole lotta babies. Feminism has argued (and I know this is only one argument in many) that meaning in patriarchal systems is generated greatly on the premise that women have a particular position that makes them different than men and therefore that as men define themselves and their positions, they include them premise (admitted or not) that every position they hold is relative to the subject position of women.
Because feminism uses the basic idea from post-modernism of contextual and subjective meaning, it is itself, as a body of knowledge, also subject to the same critiques it has used. I am content and deeply satisfied with the idea that all bodies of knowledge deserve to be viewed as systems based on a contextual body of meanings, but I am uncomfortable with any interpretation of post-modernism that allows any body of knowledge (including itself) to remain unchallenged. Feminism is unfairly critiqued here in that it is being held to the same standards of belief that the body of work surrounding Socrates has been held to; by this I mean that it is impossible, in a body of interpretation that, to my mind, relies on contextual meaning, to be forced to claim itself to be absolute in the same way Socraplatle are claimed to be. My answer here, is yeah, it's conjecture to some degree (hopefully a relatively small degree. The urge to embody should be curtailed by the knowledge that excesses of imagination are the province of poets and fiction specialists. *takes a bow* Sometimes the imagination is even more convincing than the history.) So what? Every bit of knowledge I've ever read is more or less full of conjecture. This does not stop it from being entertaining, useful and informative, so long as I remember that even at our most scrupulous, we have a tendency to engage in imaginative acts.
The reason that I do not draw a line between (the basic process of) embodying Socrates and Aspasia is that both have that element of conjecture in them. We have no way of knowing or confirming that the account given by Plato. We have only what seems correct to us and what fragments have come down to us on either subject. As such, I have no problem taking Socartes, Plato, Aspasia and any other character from history that I have encountered equally as seriously, which is to say, to the extent that they are useful to me, I will use them. Otherwise, I will read them because I should try to understand things outside my experience/things that underpin much of our political, rhetorical and spiritual roots, for which Aspasia and the controversy surrounding her as equally as informative.
To anyone who made it all the way through that monster, thank you for indulging me.
Oh, and I understand the difference between gender studies and feminism as such; to examine the gendering of a manuscript is to examine how men are identified as men and women as women in a manuscript. How do I know, when a character appears in a manuscript, if they are male or female? Is Bobby male or female?
Does Bobby sit down to pee, etc.
Feminism examines how they interact and the power dynamic expressed therein. Given that Bobby is a male, heterosexual and a Kennedy, and given that Sue is female, hetrosexual and an intern, what spoken or unspoken rules govern how they go about having a liaison? If Sue has a husband and Bobby a wife, how do they hide their liaison and who pays for the hotel room (as a symbol for who calls the shots, because where the money is, the power tends to be) etc?
They strengthen each other because a lot of the unspoken rules for keeping people in their gender roles are encoded in the enactment of gender. Women are supposed (in not a few places on this planet) to be chaste. What do we call unchaste women?
*ahem*
The definition of woman in a given culture tends to be a study of gender. How she stays a good woman is the study of feminism, as is what happens to her when she is not good.
Hope this was helpful.
A female human is a small enough thing, according to patriarchal systems, to be ignored in terms of something that no woman would want anyway (as it is posited in that definition of female), namely glory (an estimation of the polis.)
It is only the feminine, embodied in something that either cannot be biologically female (the earth) or cannot assert a right, in any fashion, to be an agent, that can be allowed to be hallowed for being feminine. This maintains the supremacy of masculinity while providing a handy model for the lesser female beings to emulate.
Oh, I forgot to add this; there is (for me) no inherent problem with whether or not Aspasia was a courtesan. If she was, more power to her. What she might have done sexually is a red herring, thrown up to discredit her, except for where it intersects with her rhetorical actions, whatever they might be. I could care less what she may have done to get by, or for fun. Arguing that she might have been a courtesan only distracts from any other contributions she might have made elsewhere, and, as I have noted in other comments, is an accusation designed to highlight her weirdness.
I find the reconstruction of female rhetors a difficult and valuable task. The more research I complete regarding female rhetorical contributions the more I understand the significance of their thoughts and ideas. When we find/read work completed by women we are able to understand more about their daily life and their place in society they lived in. So much of the rhetoric we have available is directly from men. We know so little about women, how they made contributions. I'm interested in learning more about how the women we do know about were able to break into the polis, what tools did they obtain that aided them in their success. It is so rare for women in antiquity to speak in public, and unfortunetly, if they found a way to speak, we must ask how often were they listened to.
I do stop and wonder how much of the work attributed to women was actually written by women, but I've learned that it is important to consider this when reading work attributed to many writers in antiquity, both men and women.
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