A rhetorical reading of Tendayi Westerhof's Unlucky in Love

Abstract

What could be discursively more engaging in rhetorical investigation than people writing about what they know best, their life histories? Apparently, rhetorical analysis involving the retrospective narrative in prose is herein perceived as one of the most contested issues in written discourses as it revolves around an often highly emotive terrain - "rhetorical situation" (Bitzer, 1968 in Hauser & Kjeldsen n.d., p.100) wherein the rhetorical agency's (author) utterance (literary genesis) is nothing more than a manifestation of a unique sitz-in-leben (situation in life) - the human condition involving the author. Using Tendayi Westerhof's semi-autobiographical novel, Unlucky in Love, this paper argues that HIV and AIDS is more than just a disease. It is further noted that so much logos is wasted defending and protecting conventional knowledge and moribund cultural practices. Westerhof's text collapses these cultural boundaries when she writes and universalises the story of her life – a life projected through an intriguing deployment of ethos, pathos and logos as propounded by Aristotle, and intricately balanced with a quest to identify with the target audience as instructed by Burke (1997). Disguised as Rumbidzai, Tendayi Westerhof relives her life-history relying mostly on forensic introspection of personal memory to address readers and persuade them to identify (Burke, 1997) with a version of her life experience. However, this paper argues that memory is a subjective form of evidence which cannot be externally verified but rather asserted on the subject's authority (character/ethos). Thus, broadly speaking, the article seeks to analyse the rhetorical strategies that Westerhof uses in her text to make people believe in her experiences amidst an insecure and sterile “rhetorical situation" as a woman in a patriarchal Zimbabwean society; a "rhetorical situation"; that is further aggravated by the harsh economic climate as well as the HIV and AIDS pandemic. The paper posits that by largely using autobiography as an overarching rhetorical strategy, Westerhof is able to unravel and interrogate those issues that society is usually silent on, that is the "unspeakables". The paper also posits that these issues have been both unrepresented and unrepresentable within sanctioned cultural spheres; hence it will interrogate how the rhetoric of naming such shifts identities in Zimbabwean societies.