Shirley Logan: “Private Learners: Self-Education in Rhetoric”
In the second chapter of Liberating Language, Logan examines closely five private learners of “some form of self-education” (29)—Charlotte Forten Grimke, Frances Anne Rollin Whipper, Ida B. Wells Barnett, Mary Virginia Montgomery, and Charles W. Chestnut—who “spent a good deal of time on self-improvement, especially in reading, writing, speaking, and critiquing the rhetorical performances of others, and who all recorded various aspects of their private learning in diaries” (30). Through archival research and rhetorical analysis of their published diary entries and unpublished manuscripts, she presents diary keeping as a site of rhetorical acts and claims that diary-keeping also serves rhetorical education. In addition to regarding their diary keeping as literacy practices for self-education/improvement, she further argues that their diaries “provide additional insight into the complex intellectual lives of blacks in the mid-and late nineteenth century” (32). According to her, these diarists turned to different available resources from self-help manuals to local libraries; attended public speeches and meetings and undertook various literate/literacy activities from writing letters to biographies to newspaper articles in order to self-educate. The driving force behind their pursuit was their quest for respectability, independence, racial equality, rhetorical/oratorical skills, and/or “race improvement through self-improvement” (55).
Her archival and analytical work being worth emulating and her treatment of diary-keeping as a site of rhetorical action/education being innovative, I can however see few problematic issues in this chapter.
First, she makes big claims based on just five diarists though she confesses that “these five diarists are not representative of the majority of nineteenth-century African Americans” (31). When she knows that these cases neither represent majority of nineteenth century diarists/diaries nor AA people, how could or on what ground could she draw so many generalizations?
Next, her use of the term self-education seems equally problematic. None of the diarists she discusses is solely self-educated. In contrast, all of them have different degree of formal schooling/academic training. Since nowhere does she discuss these diarists’ academic courses and course components, it is really hard to determine what rhetorical/literate skills they learned from school/training and what from “self-study/ies”. It is apparent from the text that these diarists’ learning/education is occurring simultaneously at the formal and informal settings. For instance, “[m]ost of… (Grimke’s) rhetorical work took place in her writing and in her classrooms” (39). Similarly, Rollin collaborated with Richard Greener, a Harvard scholar. Rollin also “had an impressive array of associates reading and critiquing her work” (41). Almost similar is Chestnut’s case. “His own self-education project supplied much of his education, but he also had the benefit of sound training at the postbellum Howard school” (49). Moreover, she herself at one point says: “Even though they functioned singly as individuals pursuing various kinds of knowledge, these pursuits inevitably led them to external audiences and collective engagements” (56). That is why, I am hesitating to call their pursuits self-education. I would rather be content to call their endeavors something like self-initiated learning. In fact, they don’t educate themselves rather their learning is facilitated by a number of factors—internal and external—their strong motivation, their exposure to a number of rhetorical acts like public speech, public reading, writing as well as their own involvement into various rhetorical situations/actions. Once into interactions/discussions, it is actually difficult to say for sure who teaches whom and when. And it is not necessary that teaching happens only in the formal settings. At times we learn from mentors, peers and even juniors unconsciously. Even being influenced or moved or shaped by people, ideas and actions unaware is possible.
2 comments:
I think your critique is a fair one, and the term you develop-- "self-initiated learning" seems productive. I need to go back and look at how Logan constructs the idea of self-education as it interacts with more formal learning. I read her a little differently that you did--I saw her argument as being about how we can understand the role of self-education in people's lives--the diaries being example where we can understand how the five diarists incorporate self-sponsored learning into their daily lives. You're right that they were involved in communal endeavors, but the point that she makes is that there were not compulsory activities. No one made them go or ordered them to go--it was self-chosen.
But I think your question about how much they had already learned before keeping the diaries is important. I also think your point about the five diary size sample is important. This raises a good question about how much evidence is enough? How many diaries would Logan have had to cite to convince you/us that her generalizations could be valid? What is a convincing sample-size? I think Gold can give us somewhat of an answer--microhistories are useful ways to examine larger patterns in smaller sites.
The term self-education is commonly accepted in historical scholarship on the 19th century/early 20th century because of the self-education movement through advice and conduct literature. I think Logan was rolling with what the acceptable nomenclature already is.
Good questions, Santosh. You certainly made me think through my own readings of Logan more.
The question about representation is one that I find bothersome as well...not necessarily with Logan's work in particular, but it seems that all the conclusions we make from our research are partial and contingent. It seems that the trend in postmodern research of trying to be more truthful about our research--acknowledging researcher positionality, exposing the bias of empirical research, noting the limits of our research--has left us with little to stand on. These are just questions I have as I conduct my own research. How can my research sample ever be truly representative? How can my claims ever be free of conditions? How can I defend my research choices against critique? While all of these questions are not directly related to Logan, Santosh's critique encouraged me to think about them.
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