Date: Sun, 02 Jun 1996 12:12:27 -0400
To: Athena Discuss 
Subject: Otabil and rhetoric

As expected, Otabil's contribution on the "state of the question"
provoked a quick and furious response from those he had hoist with
what I characterized as his "moral and analytical" petard.  I
should have added "rhetorical" as well.  Meadows and Kaufman, 
unshakeable in their conviction that they are "one-up", by virtue of
Western academic training, did a remarkable thing.  They castigated
Otabil for his rhetorical style!--Kaufman, in that callow way that
betrays youth, and Meadows, in that ex cathedra way suitable I
suppose for an aspiring classics professor.   

The exchange brings to mind some of my own
experiences confronting the rhetorical divide that separates
black and white.  At least among West Indians, colorful speech
is a prized aesthetic.  The greatest sin, conversely, is to
be insipid, either in thought or expression.  This aesthetic comes
through most clearly in song, where, in the calypso art form,
nothing counts as much as good lyrics, which must be at least one
of witty, clever, bombastic, or humorous to succeed, and which may range
from the coarse and vulgar to the subtlest of irony and double
entendre.  The same aesthetic comes through in political discourse,
where the kiss of death is to be boring, in courtroom histrionics
at the bar, where the clever bombast can sound sometimes
Shakespearean, and in bar-room brawling, where most duels are
fought with words.  There is a saying, "who vex, lorse", meaning
the one that loses his cool is the one that loses at least the
verbal duel.  The physical one might of course be another story.
In any case, I notice a similar aesthetic in the African-American
community.  Style, to a large degree, *is* substance.  However
deep his theology, no Af-Am pastor would keep much of a congregation
if he did not also have some style to go with it.  The steady
succession of musical art forms, also of dance, produced by the black
community, is the expression of that aesthetic imperative.
It is not the same in the halls of Western academia, but the
denizens thereof hardly ever admit that they too are in the grip
of an aesthetic, rather than being purveyors of an absolute
value.

I remember being confronted with this opposing aesthetic
imperative during my university years in North America.
There, I discovered, artful turns of phrase, and other rhetorical
"excesses" are to be "toned down".  High style is distrusted.
It suggests lack of substance.  As though the two are necessarily
in conflict.  Boring is better, because boring sticks so close
to the ground, it cannot trip.  High style, by contrast, requires 
taking a risk, like that of Icarus, of losing one's wings while soaring
in flight, then plummeting to the ground.  So, western academia
has its own aesthetic, that of a kind of academic gray-speak, if
I may coin a phrase.  I remember violating some of the canons of
academic gray-speak, and attracting sniggers of non-appreciation.
Oh, well, so it goes.  That too, was part of my education.  I 
fully expect that African-American youth, raised on rap and 
hip-hop, not to mention the expressive lingo of the 'hood, will
similarly have their wings clipped in Western academia, should they
attempt to soar too high on rhetorical "excess".  Such wing-clipping
will be taken as proof, by such as Murray and Herrnstein, insipid
as they are, of some sort of benighted inferiority.  And what is
at least in part a clash of aesthetics will be interpreted in 
absolutist Western-academic terms.  But, as the Turks say, the eye
sees all but itself. 
 
Be that as it may, the same attempt is now visited upon Mr. Otabil of
the Neo-MaatInstitute, along with much ex cathedra sneering about the 
"prestige", or implied lack thereof, of Neo-Maat.  That is 
accompanied by much intemperate attack on Mr. Otabil's use
of language.  It is not academic gray-speak, obviously.  But it
is highly effective, as there is no mistaking, again, the
moral and analytical petard with which Mr. Otabil
has hoisted his opponents.  That it has provoked their ire
is obvious.  But, as we say where I come from: "who vex, lorse!"

Regards,

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