Book Review: Angela Haas, American Indians, and Rhetoric

Book Review:
Haas, Angela M. “A Rhetoric of Alliance: What American Indians Can Tell Us About Digital and Visual Rhetoric.” Dissertation. 2008.

When deciding on a book to review I chose a dissertation that I’ve wanted to read in its entirety for some time. My background is in public policy and comparative studies in race and ethnicity, so I’ve always had fun trying to understand my identity as a scholar of rhetoric. However, the weaving of my multiple scholarly trainings is of the utmost importance to me as a cultural rhetorics scholar. So I’ll try to sort through all of that while also telling you about Angela Haas. 

In “A Rhetoric of Alliance,” Angela Haas takes on the task of tracing how American Indians have been represented in relation to technology by both Natives and non-Natives alike. Haas describes her project as follows:
"Specifically, my dissertation aims to rupture racial stereotypes and widely held theoretical and political assumptions by providing case studies on specific culturally-sitated technological practices of a specific race, utilize a broader, more flexible, and more historically-situated definition of technology and considerations of technological theories and practices, thereby reflecting a larger history of technological design and use by people of color" (70).

What I appreciate about this project is the manner in which it deconstructs culturally specific theories of technology to broaden the utility of professional writing practice and study. For example, as an rhetoric scholar Haas goes to great lengths to highlight the commonalities in the theory of the communication medium (or the skill or art of what she sees) as opposed to a given author’s utility of it. By doing so, a reader is able to see how shifting the perspective from studying the product to studying the process of making meaning, particularly in the context of Native making practices and digital technologies. It’s not an argument of better or before, but of the affordances of seeing how they’re related (I’ll return to this a little later). The secret to this argument, though, lies in her methodology.

Angela describes her theoretical framework as an "indiscipline," noting how she pulls three distinct fields together to inform conversations for Rhetoric and Writing as well as American Indian Studies (145). What I see her doing to achieve this is describing how her multiple, mixed methods collaboratively construct a picture of teaching, research, and scholarship that accounts for politics, identity, culture, dominance/power, and historical/social contexts (see pp. 170-190 for an in-depth exploration of pedagogical strategies). Angela’s methods specifically include literature reviews, rhetorical analyses of theories, historiographical/archival research, case studies, oral history, and interviews (60). And through these data she asks her readers to see how such knowledge might make them reimagine their pedagogy, as it did for me when I taught Science and Technology as a First Year Writing Course.

So, how will my work benefit from grappling with such methodological concerns? As I see it now, the affordances of generating a discourse informed by multiple methods and multiple fields of study increases the utility/applicability of an argument. I would argue that the strongest feature of Haas’ dissertation is in the realm of pedagogy, and this is largely a result of her orientation as a cultural rhetorics scholar. Haas explains that “cultural rhetorics inquiry is concerned with challenging traditional canons of rhetorical thought through the study of rhetorics historically margianalized or unrecognized by Western culture and with constructing new methodologies for investigating the plurality of histories of rhetoric" (8). When it comes to teaching a class on science and technology, consider the power in the pedagogical decision to interrogate cultural notions of science and technology. In my mind this is a big move because it facilitates the possibility of student learning outcomes to include politics and everyday life.

Again, I appreciate that Haas’ work encourages a shift of theoretical perspective and orientation surrounding the topics of technology and writing. But also useful is the way in which she connects the pedagogical with the political in order to illuminate 1) disciplinary shortcomings and 2) practical methods of challenging the dominance of colonial notions of knowledge-making.