Finding Place to Speak: Sarah Winnemucca's Rhetorical Practices in Disciplinary Spaces

Abstract

Growing up as she did in a contact zone, Sarah Winnemucca occupied social and geographical places that would come deeply to inform her rhetorical advocacy far-off plains of West and for Northern Paiute tribes (Life 207).1 While a rich body of scholarship lays out influence of Winnemucca's social place on her discursive strategies, influence of Winnemucca's physical place on her rhetorical practices has been consistently overlooked.' Yet, as this essay seeks to demonstrate, physical places and discourses that shape them are critical to Winnemucca's rhetorical choices and to ultimate success of her rhetoric. Born on western fringes of US territory just prior to Anglo--American settlement in region. Winnemucca found herself in midst of nationalist anxieties about expansion. As Carolyn Sorisio argues, imperialist mandate of Manifest Destiny defined and refined notions of nationhood, threatening a stable domestic identity even as it sought to expand nation's domestic reach. Native Americans found themselves caught up in riptides of both and imperialism: their representations by and to Anglo--Americans depended on their locations. Those Native Americans who were located firmly within US borders were represented as subjects for colonialism's project to assimilate and domesticate. Those along frontier (like Winnemucca) were viewed as foreign and therefore subject to imperialist conquest (36-41). Sorisio explains, Spatially, Winnemucca witnessed a shift from Northern Paiute's territory conceptualized as outside US to being incorporated within it, from imperialism to colonialism (37). This shift from foreign to domestic (ated) body became part of context Winnemucca negotiated in every rhetorical performance. Within this broader context, Winnemucca also navigated specific expectations of sites where she performed: lecture halls, reservation lands, military forts. In each place, she sought to create a space for persuasion, one that allowed her personal and tribal concerns to be heard by her Anglo--American audience. While most scholars focus on Winnemucca's public lectures and her 1883 autobiography, I focus here on some of her lesser-known rhetorical performances: disciplinary spaces of reservation and military fort. (3) By disciplinary space, here I mean any site that aims at Foucauldian discipline as explained in Discipline and Punish. Discipline is a mechanism that makes [the body] more obedient as it becomes more (138). Disciplinary spaces are particularly useful for analyzing spatial rhetorics, as discipline relies on distribution of individuals in space This occurs through enclosure, the specification of a place heterogeneous to all others and closed in upon itself (141); partitioning, specification of a place for each individual (143); and rank, the place one occupies in a classification (145). For each space, I explore how that site both constrains and enables Winnemucca's rhetorical choices. I begin with a site analysis of each place, in terms of its physical layout (where known and applicable) and its framing ideology and spatial function. I then analyze ways that Winnemucca negotiates these spatial parameters in her rhetoric. Finally, I assess how her strategies in each space represent a search for shared rhetorical space--physical or cultural ground that provides basis for identification with her audience--that would enable her to make a persuasive argument on behalf of herself and Northern Paiutes.(4) DEFINING SPACE AND PLACE Most spatial theorists distinguish between space as an abstract or relational term and place as a concrete site (McDowell 32). Like other critical social factors, such as race, class, and gender, spaces and places are socially constructed and constructing. Cultural factors shape ways that we interpret particular places and landscapes, and these places and landscapes in turn influence social behaviors of individuals situated within them. …