Book Review: Bodily Arts by Debra Hawhee
Figure 1.0 (source)
Book title: Bodily Arts: Rhetoric and Athletics in Ancient Greece.
Citation: Hawhee, Debra. “Bodily Arts: Rhetoric and Athletics in Ancient Greece.” Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004. https://platform.virdocs.com/r/s/0/doc/541057/sp/221220735/mi/661069870?cfi=%2F4%2F4. It is accessed, 31, October 2021.
Introduction
Theorists are like sailors. When a sailor’s path becomes muddy, the compass helps find the way. As theorists, when the world becomes muddy, and we wonder why there’s so much injustice, we turn to theory, and like a compass, it guides us to a possible utopia. Ideas are shaped by concepts or words whose etymology dates several centuries. For instance, many images that shape modern scholars’ theoretical analyses are rooted in Graeco-Roman culture and history. The art of turning to ancient historical and mythical practices to explain the contemporary phenomenon is unreservedly expressed on the pages of the book Bodily Arts. In the book Bodily Arts, Debra Hawhee transports her readers to the Classical world of the Athenians. She uses words (logoi) whose etymology is rooted in the culture of these people to aid our understanding of the ways critical cultural scholars develop conceptual frameworks. The book, Bodily Arts, is divided into 7 chapters. Each chapter is uniquely structured as a part of an entire plot. The piece is relevant because it exposes its readers, to the ways athletes and rhetors, two distinct bodies are connected syncretically. She explicates ways in which these two bodies are alike in the choices they must both make to remain relevant in public spheres. The book also describes the roles audiences, judges, and opponents play in how athletic and rhetorical bodies negotiate bodily presence.
Concepts and Theoretical Relevance
Chapter 1 discusses the concept, virtuosity(arete). Hawhee operationalizes the classical words agon and athletics, to describe their significance in the production of virtuosity. To the Greeks, agon refers to the people or the bodies that make up a contest, while athlios refers more explicitly to the contest in relation to the prize. The agon or the people who make up the arena where the contest holds, drive the athletes to compete. Hawhee also refers to the audience (the people who make rhetorical struggles) as those who drive the speaker’s rhetorical practice. This chapter concludes with the idea that arete has both athletic and rhetorical implications significance. The economic benefit or honor (kleos) is extended to an athlete or rhetor as a prize(athlios). Rhetorically speaking, Hawhee suggests that arete with its economic interpretation makes the athletic body's opponents and judges agents driving the body. Chapter 2 reinforces the idea in chapter 1. It introduces the concept, Metis and its relationship with arete as elements that shape athletic struggle. Metis is the “mode of negotiating agonistic forces, the ability to cunningly and effectively maneuver... in the heat of the moment”. (47). Hawhee demonstrates how metis is operationalized by recounting the mythical stories of Odysseus and the one-eyed Polyphemus, the story of Odysseus and the Trojan Horse, as well as the tale of Odysseus and Athena. For instance, it was the practical application of metis, that helped Odysseus succeed in all three of these classic tales. Odysseus’ body, driven by arete, was motivated by the Olympic ethos, and metis to win honor (kleos) for himself. Metis or cunny drives the athletes or rhetor to “change in response to particular situation or danger” (58). The athletic and rhetorical implication of metis is that the human has the capacity(hexeis) to respond to exigencies in order to get the reward. In chapter three, Kairos is introduced as time. This moment is what Bitzer(1968) calls exigency. It is the moment that calls for the application of metis in rhetorical and athletic practices. “The rhetor who operates mainly in the awareness of Kairos, responds spontaneously to the fleeting situation at hand, speaks on the spur of the moment, and addresses each occasion in its particularity, its singularity, its uniqueness"(p. 69).
Moving on, the last three chapters touched upon the ways the athlete and rhetor use their bodies in response to the stage or physical environment. In chapter 4, Hawhee briefly introduces Kairos. Kairos emphasizes the idea that the body can be trained to serve as an instrument of pleasure or pain. In training the body, the athlete or rhetor uses metis, not at all times, but in certain situations (kairos) due to “provocation" or "seduction” (93). In chapter 5, Hawhee discusses the concept, gymnasium I and expands on the same idea in the next chapter. The gymnasium is the physical space used in rhetoric and athletic practice. "In Athens, the gymnasium combined the physical with the intellectual" (110). In order words, it was a physical space used for athletic, military training, and funerary practices. On one hand, athletes were seen "dressing, oiling, and dusting." (118) their bodies in preparation for training; While on the other hand, "the colonnades, the exedrae, the undressing room, and the groves and walks, in the case of the Academy and the Lyceum, were the areas in the gymnasium where philosophers and sophists would gather with youths for rhetorical and philosophical training" (122). In order words, both the athletes and rhetors use the gymnasium for performance but in different ways. While the gymnasium may have its traditional use, it was not uncommon for these rooms such as the "apodyterium to be “erotically charged " (124).
Hawhee continues her description of the gymnasium in chapter 6. The musicality or sound which echo as a result of the ways the athletes and rhetors use their bodies is referred to as the gymnasium II. These sounds are described as the rhythm, repetition, and response that comes from the space. To explain this musical effect, the concept cheromenia is introduced, and is likened to gesticulation in boxing and the art of delivery in rhetoric. Rhythm, repetition and response were important to athletes or trainers in the gymnasium, as well as the responses from the people. What determines the responses that athletes and rhetors get are the amounts of repetitive training and the rhythm with which they perform I liken this to mastery of their artistic and athletic gifts. In chapter 7, Hawhee describes how through visible rhetoric, coming from the audience in the gymnasium, the athlete or rhetor is continuously rearticulated. It also refers to the ways they circulate the “honor or shame” (182). Through festivals, "the crowd itself—its gathering—rather than the performing body of the athlete, becomes a rhetorical proof." (191). Debra Hawhee’s Bodily Art is enthralling in how it describes what goes on in the body of the athlete or rhetor and then moves on to describe how the athlete’s or rhetor’s body interacts with the physical space and other bodies. The book connects with many of the theories and concepts we have explored in some of the readings in this course. Among those concepts are articulation theory, rhetorical theory, and psychoanalytic theory.
Let’s begin with articulation theory. Articulation theory is the act of establishing relationships among meanings, such that their identities are altered or modified. It is also the process through which we use language to create or recreate the image(s) of a person, place, or thing (Laclau & Moufee, 1985). Hawhee's book alludes to articulation theory, even though the theory was never referenced. This allusion is evident through the linking of athletic bodies with rhetorical bodies to explain the historical, religious, or mythical narratives behind the development of words and their place in rhetorical practices. In chapter 1, she introduced us to the term arete and connected the aforementioned concept with other ideas, such as agon, athletics, and kleos, as elements in the creation of the athletic body. In articulations, the “relationship between discourse and social reality is dialectical. (Bower & Hannah, 117). Through articulation, she describes the ways the athletic and mythical bodies of Odysseus and Athena meet, to explain the historical and mythological development of metis, and emphasize the importance of these bodies in her narrative. Metis or cunny intelligence is to be applied only in specific situations. Metis or cunny drives the athletes and rhetor to “change in response to a particular situation” (58). Even more, in articulations, the body changes to create a certain identity during exigencies. “Articulations can be transformed and altered into different versions based off the original.” (Brower & Hannah, 2019, 117). Hawhee refers to those situations that necessitate the altering of identities as hexeis, and such alterations are made possible through metis (or cunny intelligence), just as it is evident in the articulations of Odysseus and Athena. On one hand, "Odysseus, wary of revealing his name to anyone in Ithaca, before he can assess his household for himself, tells Athena-cum-shepherd boy a string of untruths regarding his status as a fugitive"; and on the other hand, "Athena approaches Odysseus, herself, disguised as a shepherd boy who answers Odysseus’" (Hawhee, 52).
Articulation is performative and exigencies are situations that call for such performances. Exigence is also an important concept, not only in articulation but also in rhetorical theory.
I now turn to rhetorical theory. Bitzer (1968) refers to exigence as a situation that causes the rhetor or athlete to speak or act in a certain way. An exigence as a rhetorical situation, requires three elements. “The first is the exigence; the second and third are elements of the complex, namely the audience to be constrained in decision and action, and the constraints which influence the rhetor, and can be brought to bear upon the audience.” (Bitzer, 7). In the same vein, Hawhee's piece alludes to rhetorical theory in her description of the athletic body. She emphasizes the importance of exigence (kairos) in the ways it calls for the athletic body’s performance. She also identifies other elements which make up an exigence. The first of these two elements, which Bitzer (1968) referred to as an audience in an exigence, is what Hawhee refers to as agon in chapter 1. In chapter 6, Hawhee introduced gymnasium II, as the second element, which Bitzer (1968) also refers to as being instrumental to how the audience affects the athletic body. These elements are a part of the processes during rhetorical situations, and they force the athletes and rhetors to negotiate their bodily presence.
As classical athletic and rhetorical bodies had to negotiate their bodily presence in ancient socio-political spaces, so do athletic and political bodies in modern discourse. For instance, Bower and Hanna (2019) describe the athletic exigencies that necessitated Tyrann’s bodily articulations as honey badger as he negotiated his relevance in NFL. While Shome (2014) examines Princess Diana’s bodily articulation in the public sphere. Shome (2014) described the ways Diana during both local and global political exigencies, is forced to negotiate her bodily presence. Diana “built herself up, fought her oppressive personal conditions, and endeared herself to the people-domestic and global-through the glamour and style of her body” (88). Diana through bodily articulation recreates her body to project identities suitable for specific exigencies or moments (kairoi) and audiences (gymnasia). Through Shome's (2014) lens, for instance, we see how Princess Diana “becomes a useful site to explore the construction of global motherhood” (115).
Moving on, Hawhee’s piece also operationalizes psychoanalytic theory. Sigmund Freud (1865) developed psychoanalytic theory (Positivepsychology, 2020). This theory states that the mind is a site of struggle where unconscious desires affect human behavior. In order words, pleasure (eros) and pain (melancholia) constantly struggle for expression and affect human’s outward behavior. In the same vein, Hawhee described how the audience (agon and gymnasium II), motivate(althios) the athletic or rhetorical body, to contest for a prize (athlios) to receive the honor (arete). Honor (arete) accrues to an athlete through desire. Desire can force the mind to present the body in certain ways in rhetorical situations. In psychoanalytic theory, it is the feeling of loss(melancholia) that causes the body to pursue death instincts. Hawhee explains that the pursuit of honor (arete) is an endeavor that motivates the body to present itself in different ways, as evident in Odysseus' pursuit of honor. Bodily performance in the pursuit of honor, invites the application of metis (cunny intelligence). What Hawhee calls metis, Kelly (2020) labels as death drive.
Conclusion & Final thoughts
Hawhee’s Bodily Arts presents a weaving together of classical concepts, whose significance was syncretically articulated through athletic and rhetoric bodies. One big idea that stood out in this piece is metis. Metis is significant as a conceptual framework for critical cultural studies scholarship. I think it is useful in understanding human behaviors and how pleasure or pain motivate them to act during exigencies. Scholars in the fields of rhetoric, interpersonal communication, social work and law research will find relevant to their scholarship. As I sum up my review of this work of art, a big question kept coming to mind. Let me leave you with the same question, hopefully, you can solve this Sphinx Riddle. Can we use metis to promote justice or good in the world? Or is it damned to bring evil, like Cassandra?
Citations
Allen, Mike. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods. 4 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc, 2017. SAGE Research Methods. Web. 24 Nov. 2021, doi: 10.4135/9781483381411.
Asen, Robert, & Brower, Daniel C. “Public Modalities: Rhetoric, Culture, Media, and the Shape of Public Life”. The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, 2010.
Bitzer, L. F. (1968). “The rhetorical situation”. Philosophy and Rhetoric. 1–14.
Grano, Daniel A., & Butterworth, Michael L. “Sport, Rhetoric and Political Struggle.” Peter Lang Publishing, New York, 2019.
Hawhee, Debra. “Bodily Arts: Rhetoric and Athletics in Ancient Greece”. Austin: University of Texas Press.
2004.https://platform.virdocs.com/r/s/0/doc/541057/sp/221220735/mi/661069870?cfi=%2F4%2F4. Accessed, 31, October 2021.
Kelly, Casey. “Apocalypse Man: The Death Drive and The Rhetoric of White Masculine Victimhood”. The Ohio State University Press, Columbus. 2020.
Positive psychology. (n.d). Psychoanalysis. https://positivepsychology.com/psychoanalysis/. Accessed, November 10, 2021.
Rodrigo, Quim. “Materiality of Discourse with Foucault.” YouTube, uploaded by Critique with Nietzsche and Foucault, 16 Jan. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lklhyNP6-YM&t=204s.