*Article* **Senegal, the African Slave Trade, and the Door of No Return: Giving Witness to Gorée Island**

### **Dalla Malé Fofana**

Department of French and Quebec Studies, School of Education, Bishop's University, 2600 College St, Sherbrooke, QC J1M 1Z7, Canada; mfofana@ubishops.ca

Received: 2 June 2020; Accepted: 30 June 2020; Published: 2 July 2020

**Abstract:** Recently, the Senegalese people have learned to speak more openly of their history. But, as late as the 1980s—the years of my youth and early schooling—the wounds of colonialism were still fresh. I contend that slavery had been so powerful a blow to the Senegalese ethos that we—my family, friends, and schoolmates—did not speak about it. The collective trauma and shame of slavery was apparently so powerful that we sought to repress it, keeping it hidden from ourselves. We were surrounded by its evidence, but chose not to see it. Such was my childhood experience. As an adult, I understand that repression never heals wounds. The trauma remains as a haunting presence. But one can discover its "living presence," *should one choose to look*. Just 5.2 km off the west African coast of Senegal lies Gorée Island, where millions of Africans were held captive while awaiting transport into slavery. Much of the four-century history of the African slave trade passed through Senegal, where I grew up. In this essay, I explore the history of the island and its role in the slave trade. I describe my own coming to terms with this history—how it has haunted me since my youth. And I argue for the role of visual rhetorics in the formation (and affirmation) of Senegalese ethos. As Baumlin and Meyer (2018) remind us, we need to speak, in order to be heard, in order to be seen: Such is an assumption of rhetorical ethos. And the reverse, as I shall argue, may be true, too: Sometimes *we need to see* (or be seen), in order to know *what* to speak and *how* to be heard. It is for this reason that we need more films written, directed, produced, and performed by Africans (Senegalese especially).

**Keywords:** African slave trade; ethos; trauma; visual rhetorics; wolof language; Dakar; Door of No Return; Gorée Island; House of Slaves; Senegal

### **1. Introduction**

Ethos is created when writers locate themselves.

—Nedra Reynolds, "Ethos as Location" (Reynolds 1993, p. 336)

A person has a past. The experiences gathered during one's life are a part of today as well as yesterday. Memory exists in the nostrils and the hands, not only in the mind. A fragrance drifts by, and a memory is evoked. It damages people to rob them of their past and deny their memories, or to mock their fears and worries. A person without a past is incomplete.

—Eric J. Cassel, "The Nature of Suffering" (Cassel 1982, p. 642)

The following is an exercise in the ethos of storytelling. In the epigraph above, what Cassel writes about the individual can be said collectively of a people: the Senegalese, in my case. Much like a person, a people "without a past is," as Cassel implies, "incomplete." We can go further and state that much of that past—or shall I say, much of the past that matters—is recorded in story. In this essay, I will be practicing a form of "scholarship of the personal," a hybrid genre that conjoins historical-cultural analysis with personal narrative.

I shall be telling the story of my coming to terms with a sad chapter in Senegalese history: specifically, the African slave trade, how I learned about it, and how my understanding of it—as well as *of myself* as Senegalese—has evolved. My own ethos is defined, in large part, by the collective memory of slavery imposed upon Africans. And I shall be focusing on a specific place where this slavery was imposed: Gorée Island, whose House of Slaves led to the Door of No Return. (See Figure 1) For "Ethos," as Nedra Renolds writes above, "is created when writers locate themselves." Ethos, in other words, adheres to places as well as to people. If "a person without a past is incomplete," then I would add that a person's "past" is inconceivable without a "place." The places of one's wounding—individually and collectively, historically and contemporaneously—are infused with the actions and adhere to the victims both in body and in memory. historical-cultural analysis with personal narrative. I shall be telling the story of my coming to terms with a sad chapter in Senegalese history: specifically, the African slave trade, how I learned about it, and how my understanding of it—as well as *of myself* as Senegalese—has evolved. My own ethos is defined, in large part, by the collective memory of slavery imposed upon Africans. And I shall be focusing on a specific place where this slavery was imposed: Gorée Island, whose House of Slaves led to the Door of No Return. (See Figure 1) For "Ethos," as Nedra Renolds writes above, "is created when writers locate themselves." Ethos, in other words, adheres to places as well as to people. If "a person without a past is incomplete," then I would add that a person's "past" is inconceivable without a "place." The places of one's wounding—individually and collectively, historically and contemporaneously—are infused with the actions and adhere to the victims both in body and in memory.

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essay, I will be practicing a form of "scholarship of the personal," a hybrid genre that conjoins

**Figure 1.** *Ile Gorée*, Senegal. Creative Commons (photo by Antonin Rémond). **Figure 1.** *Ile Gorée*, Senegal. Creative Commons (photo by Antonin Rémond).

Unless my readers are African or otherwise well-educated, I doubt that they will know much about the history that I will be recounting; or they may know the story through other, likely Eurocentric texts. Some readers may not know where Senegal is. ("It's in Africa, right?" But do not ask them *where* in Africa). Many will know something of the African slave trade, but not of my nation's role in it; even if they know of Senegal, they are not likely to know of the specific place that I shall be describing (see Figure 2). I confess that, in my youth, even I did not know the whole story. In my adulthood, I know that story—and myself—better. Indeed, I know myself *through* the story. Unless my readers are African or otherwise well-educated, I doubt that they will know much about the history that I will be recounting; or they may know the story through other, likely Eurocentric texts. Some readers may not know where Senegal is. ("It's in Africa, right?" But do not ask them *where* in Africa). Many will know something of the African slave trade, but not of my nation's role in it; even if they know of Senegal, they are not likely to know of the specific place that I shall be describing (see Figure 2). I confess that, in my youth, even I did not know the whole story. In my adulthood, I know that story—and myself—better. Indeed, I know myself *through* the story.

I need to add, however, that it is not the story but the *image* of a doorway that haunts my personal experience of growing up Senegalese. This essay is not about storytelling in words alone. It is about the confluence of verbal and visual rhetorics—of the ways that the African slave trade "dwells" in places visualized as well as in language and memory. Popular media is implicated in this unleashing of the story of Gorée Island. While popular media like films and poster advertising (even advertising as a government-sponsored public service) "give visual presence" to the place I shall be discussing, these are not, in themselves, transparent mediums of communication. They introduce their own distortions, prejudices, idealizations, and partial truths. I shall argue that, yes, visual images have an important role to play in introducing the slave trade to contemporary audiences (African and non-African alike); but these need the supplement of texts. Most important, of course, is to visit the place: to bear witness to it, seeing and feeling it for oneself.

**Figure 2.** The House of Slaves (*la Maison des Esclaves*), Gorée Island. Wikimedia Commons (photo by John Crane). Note the "Door of No Return" in the lower level. **Figure 2.** The House of Slaves (*la Maison des Esclaves*), Gorée Island. Wikimedia Commons (photo by John Crane). Note the "Door of No Return" in the lower level.

### I need to add, however, that it is not the story but the *image* of a doorway that haunts my personal **2. Failing to See**

experience of growing up Senegalese. This essay is not about storytelling in words alone. It is about the confluence of verbal and visual rhetorics—of the ways that the African slave trade "dwells" in places visualized as well as in language and memory. Popular media is implicated in this unleashing Seeing is of course very much a matter of verbalization. Unless I call my attention to what passes before my eyes, I simply will not see it. It is, as Ruskin says, "not merely unnoticed, but in the full, clear sense of the word, unseen."

as a government-sponsored public service) "give visual presence" to the place I shall be discussing,

of the story of Gorée Island. While popular media like films and poster advertising (even advertising —Annie Dillard, *Pilgrim at Tinker Creek* (Dillard 1974, p. 33)

these are not, in themselves, transparent mediums of communication. They introduce their own distortions, prejudices, idealizations, and partial truths. I shall argue that, yes, visual images have an important role to play in introducing the slave trade to contemporary audiences (African and non-African alike); but these need the supplement of texts. Most important, of course, is to visit the place: to bear witness to it, seeing and feeling it for oneself. **2. Failing to See**  Seeing is of course very much a matter of verbalization. Unless I call my attention to what passes before my eyes, I simply will not see it. It is, as Ruskin says, "not merely unnoticed, I was twelve at the time, attending École Neuve Algor Dioum in Diourbel, an inland city some 150 km east of Dakar. I was in the last station of primary cycle in the history programme, in a class taught by Mr. Hanne. In his class, I learned that Africans were kidnapped—stolen from their homelands—and sold into slavery. From the 15th through to the 19th century, captives were taken from across sub-Saharan Africa; and Dakar in Senegal, the west African nation where I was born and raised, was one of the main ports of transit where captives were brought, bought, and shipped off to the Americas. That was the substance of Mr. Hanne's lecture. As he spoke, I could feel the whole class gasp and exhale. Shame mingled with our surprise. Our questions were typical of twelve-year-old boys: "But how could a person be sold in exchange for a rifle or a mirror?" "How could our ancestors have been so weak to be treated this way?" I left class in a daze.

but in the full, clear sense of the word, unseen." —Annie Dillard, *Pilgrim at Tinker Creek* (Dillard 1974, p. 33) I was twelve at the time, attending École Neuve Algor Dioum in Diourbel, an inland city some 150 km east of Dakar. I was in the last station of primary cycle in the history programme, in a class No other piece of information would ever shake me the way that did, changing my view of the world forever. And yet, after his lecture, I do not remember speaking about it; not to my schoolmates, not to my friends, not to my family. Borne in part of confusion but also of shame, that silence on my part seems to reflect a similar reticence on the part of my culture at that time—as if the wound were too big and it were best not to talk about it.

taught by Mr. Hanne. In his class, I learned that Africans were kidnapped—stolen from their homelands—and sold into slavery. From the 15th through to the 19th century, captives were taken from across sub-Saharan Africa; and Dakar in Senegal, the west African nation where I was born and raised, was one of the main ports of transit where captives were brought, bought, and shipped off to Two years later, I had a chance to go on a group trip to Gorée Island. Lying some 5.2 km west of Dakar, Gorée Island was the largest slave-trading centre on the African coast, containing such monuments as the House of Slaves and the infamous Door of No Return. Our brief visit was not meant to be educational so much as it was a school "merit badge," a way of saying "we've been there." We

the Americas. That was the substance of Mr. Hanne's lecture. As he spoke, I could feel the whole class gasp and exhale. Shame mingled with our surprise. Our questions were typical of twelve-year-old

had not even registered for a proper tour of the House<sup>1</sup> . I enjoyed the ferry ride but the place—not so much. Being claustrophobic, I had an excuse for not entering the narrow passages leading to low-ceilinged prisoners' cells (see Figure 3). I did not want to know that as many as twenty human beings were stuffed into rooms twelve metres deep and twelve metres wide, not knowing where they were going and what was happening to them (N'diaye 2006). Just glancing into them made my blood freeze. Even today, I can still feel the sensations of suffocation. As for the Door, it seemed like a portal to a black hole in space, leading nowhere (see Figure 4). Two years earlier, I did not want to hear about it (or talk about it); now, apparently, I did not want to see it. world forever. And yet, after his lecture, I do not remember speaking about it; not to my schoolmates, not to my friends, not to my family. Borne in part of confusion but also of shame, that silence on my part seems to reflect a similar reticence on the part of my culture at that time—as if the wound were too big and it were best not to talk about it. Two years later, I had a chance to go on a group trip to Gorée Island. Lying some 5.2 km west of Dakar, Gorée Island was the largest slave-trading centre on the African coast, containing such monuments as the House of Slaves and the infamous Door of No Return. Our brief visit was not meant to be educational so much as it was a school "merit badge," a way of saying "we've been

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boys: "But how could a person be sold in exchange for a rifle or a mirror?" "How could our ancestors

No other piece of information would ever shake me the way that did, changing my view of the

When I was twenty, I left Senegal; that was in 1998. For the next ten years, I lived in France. It is curious how living elsewhere allows one to see one's home place differently. I tell my students (yes, I teach now) that it was at a public exhibition in Nancy, France, that I learned *how large* a rhinoceros is and *how tall* a giraffe can be. *Did I have to leave Africa in order to see it?* (It is almost as if we are blinded and numb to the everyday world: In order to see truly, we have to see differently.) During those ten years spent in France, I returned to Senegal three times, each for very short periods. And during none of those brief visits did I feel the need to go back to Gorée Island. there." We had not even registered for a proper tour of the House1. I enjoyed the ferry ride but the place—not so much. Being claustrophobic, I had an excuse for not entering the narrow passages leading to low-ceilinged prisoners' cells (see Figure 3). I did not want to know that as many as twenty human beings were stuffed into rooms twelve metres deep and twelve metres wide, not knowing where they were going and what was happening to them (N'diaye 2006). Just glancing into them made my blood freeze. Even today, I can still feel the sensations of suffocation. As for the Door, it seemed like a portal to a black hole in space, leading nowhere (see Figure 4). Two years earlier, I did not want to hear about it (or talk about it); now, apparently, I did not want to see it.

**Figure 3.** Passageway to Prisoners' Cells (*Cellules, Maison des Esclaves*). Wikimedia Commons (photo by HaguardDuNord). **Figure 3.** Passageway to Prisoners' Cells (*Cellules, Maison des Esclaves*). Wikimedia Commons (photo by HaguardDuNord).

not see Joseph Ndiaye, but his voice resonated in our ears in the way he would usually narrate the tragedy

in that fashion that is so well rooted in the African traditional storytelling.

<sup>1</sup> School trips to Gorée Island in Senegal at that time were not institutionalized. The consequence of this lack of formality is that we did not even make a phone call or register for a guided tour of the House. Moreover, we failed to show up in time for one of the daily visits. The only sneak peek some of us (the most insistent ones) could have of the place was under the pressure of a security guard who finally let us in for a very short while. A small group of two boys and three girls who came back after the big group moved away and implored on the brink of tears for the clemency of the security guide. It was July 1990. So, we obviously did <sup>1</sup> School trips to Gorée Island in Senegal at that time were not institutionalized. The consequence of this lack of formality is that we did not even make a phone call or register for a guided tour of the House. Moreover, we failed to show up in time for one of the daily visits. The only sneak peek some of us (the most insistent ones) could have of the place was under the pressure of a security guard who finally let us in for a very short while. A small group of two boys and three girls who came back after the big group moved away and implored on the brink of tears for the clemency of the security guide. It was July 1990. So, we obviously did not see Joseph Ndiaye, but his voice resonated in our ears in the way he would usually narrate the tragedy in that fashion that is so well rooted in the African traditional storytelling.

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**Figure 4.** "The Door of No Return" (La Porte du Non Retour de la Maison des Esclaves). Wikimedia Commons (photo by Wandering Angel). **Figure 4.** "The Door of No Return" (La Porte du Non Retour de la Maison des Esclaves). Wikimedia Commons (photo by Wandering Angel).

When I was twenty, I left Senegal; that was in 1998. For the next ten years, I lived in France. It is curious how living elsewhere allows one to see one's home place differently. I tell my students (yes, I teach now) that it was at a public exhibition in Nancy, France, that I learned *how large* a rhinoceros is and *how tall* a giraffe can be. *Did I have to leave Africa in order to see it?* (It is almost as if we are blinded and numb to the everyday world: In order to see truly, we have to see differently.) During those ten years spent in France, I returned to Senegal three times, each for very short periods. And during none of those brief visits did I feel the need to go back to Gorée Island. From France, I moved to Canada. Once in Québec, I took another ten years before going back home to visit family. I also took advantage of that time to teach at Cesti, the journalism section of Dakar's Université Cheikh Anta Diop. This was of great symbolic importance to me, since I was From France, I moved to Canada. Once in Québec, I took another ten years before going back home to visit family. I also took advantage of that time to teach at Cesti, the journalism section of Dakar's Université Cheikh Anta Diop. This was of great symbolic importance to me, since I was returning to Senegal as a teacher after having left twenty years before as a student. I would not have the time to go to Gorée Island and visit the House with "fresh," informed eyes, but I had learned more of the history in the meantime and was able to share my impressions with colleagues and students<sup>2</sup> . And I knew my task, though the moment was not yet right: As an adult, I would need to revisit the House of Slaves and its Door of no Return. But I know something now that I could never have guessed back then: Wherever I have studied, worked, and taught, I have brought the House of Slaves with me

returning to Senegal as a teacher after having left twenty years before as a student. I would not have

most Senegalese have never been to the local zoo.

Besides, it is important to point out that in Africa, we do not have the culture of travelling from a place to another for sightseeing (to see "things"). We would rather do that to meet or visit relatives. As an example,

the time to go to Gorée Island and visit the House with "fresh," informed eyes, but I had learned more of the history in the meantime and was able to share my impressions with colleagues and students2. And I knew my task, though the moment was not yet right: As an adult, I would need to 2 It might be somewhat puzzling for some readers to notice that I did not/could not go back to the House of Slaves, given how important it reveals itself to be for me. But one thing to bear in mind is that going back to Senegal for a month or less is a hectic experience for many of us, not compatible with the poise needed to go to that place for a proper self-examination. Back to Senegal for that short time, one literally sinks in urgent material needs as well as in concerns that have to do with families and relatives. As a matter of fact, even the locals do not feel the need to go to Gorée (repeatedly). They feel that struggling to cope with everyday life and economic problems is more relevant. Such daily hardships make a visit to Gorée a secondary concern. 2 It might be somewhat puzzling for some readers to notice that I did not/could not go back to the House of Slaves, given how important it reveals itself to be for me. But one thing to bear in mind is that going back to Senegal for a month or less is a hectic experience for many of us, not compatible with the poise needed to go to that place for a proper self-examination. Back to Senegal for that short time, one literally sinks in urgent material needs as well as in concerns that have to do with families and relatives. As a matter of fact, even the locals do not feel the need to go to Gorée (repeatedly). They feel that struggling to cope with everyday life and economic problems is more relevant. Such daily hardships make a visit to Gorée a secondary concern. Besides, it is important to point out that in Africa, we do not have the culture of travelling from a place to another for sightseeing (to see "things"). We would rather do that to meet or visit relatives. As an example, most Senegalese have never been to the local zoo.On the other hand, the paradigm of Gorée Island is not a subject of common discussion in the media. The discussed topics are rather the current economic and political situation which is presented as linked to government's actions rather than to a more remote event. Many consider relating the current situation to the Slave Trade is taking a fatalist stance.The House of Slaves therefore attracts far more foreign tourists along with diaspora, slave-descendant Black Americans than African locals. In fact, they make us remember. Coverage of high-profile visitors tothe House of Slave is the only occasion for this part of our history to be mentioned in the media. And we would again see Joseph Ndiaye and hear again his firm and strong voice re-telling his well-known narration that educated locals know so well even without having been there.

unconsciously; and, in my dreamwork, I have stood at the Door of No Return. What I tried *not* to see or speak about has, in fact, haunted me since childhood.

I have my doctorate now. Currently, I teach linguistics, communication, and discourse analysis at Bishop's University and Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec, Canada. Inside, though, I am still that young Senegalese student feeling himself shaken to the core by the lessons of history. And I think back to my initial feelings regarding Mr. Hanne's lecture on the slave trade, which were not so much of outrage as of disbelief—of confusion that turns to anger and leads, curiously, to feelings of shame. And the questions that arose in the twelve-year-old me still rise, today: How could a proud people allow themselves to be enslaved? The trauma that I personally suffered in the hearing of that story—and it is one shared by many Africans today—remains tied to self-esteem. How to overcome the inferiority complex imposed by white colonialism? How to recover self-esteem? These are questions for a person, a community, a nation, a continent.

The so-called "civilized" countries that participated in the slave trade find it convenient to forget, too. *They* prospered off of African wealth in all respects: human, animal, agricultural, mineral and, yes, cultural. Today, their prosperity continues, while the African continent lags so far behind. Colonialism and even the sad episode of slavery is not all that far in the past; in fact, these remain linked to the continent's current challenges. Yes, Africans are owed compensation, but economics alone cannot heal their wounds. African history, I have learned, is a series of atrocities and traumas. Physically, emotionally, psychologically, my ancestors endured much. And, having heard Mr. Hanne's history lesson, the trauma of slavery became my own—though it was in self-image that I suffered the wound. The color of my skin had not changed, but the way I experienced that color changed, knowing what white Europeans did to black Africans.

### **3. Learning to See Better**

[W]e presume that specific life-events—traumas for the most part—play constitutive roles in identity-formation. The abused spouse lives within an event and a narrative of that event: the abuse becomes thematic within that person's self-image and life-story . . . . A further corollary to postclassical ethos . . . is the need to tell one's story, particularly those aspects that bear wounds. Indeed, the highest aim of ethotic discourse is, or ought to be, to share one's story; and, with respect to one's functioning as audience, the highest corresponding aim is to bear witness to that other's story.

—James S. Baumlin and Craig A. Meyer, "Positioning Ethos" (Baumlin and Meyer 2018, p. 17)

I know that the atrocities of the so-called New World's European colonizers did not stop with the enslavement of Africans. The sufferings of indigenous peoples throughout North and South America, Central America, and the Caribbean are reflected in my own people's history, too. Included in this special issue, Craig A. Meyer's essay, "From Wounded Knee to Sacred Circles: Oglala Lakota Ethos as 'Haunt' and 'Wound'" (2018) gave inspiration—and a model—for my own narrative scholarship. The following paragraph, for example, is mine now, but it was taken from Meyer's essay and rewritten, with the Native American vocabulary overlaid by Senegalese:

To understand Senegalese ethos today, one must understand the importance of the experience of the African slave trade, which extends to the visuals, the emotions, the memories of place—that is, to the entire experience (Fixico 2003, p. 22). *It is the mythos of Gorée Island and the House of Slaves* that we must seek to understand. For the European bystander, it is easy to dismiss the slave trade as having happened over 100 years ago to some group at some place; it is markedly different if one's cultural identity rests in a continual retelling—in effect, a reliving—of colonialism. As Donald L. Fixico writes, "When retold, the experience comes alive again, recreating the experience by evoking the emotions of listeners, transcending

past-present-future. Time does not imprison the story" (Fixico 2003, p. 22). The telling of these stories forms an integral part of Senegalese ethos, both *as-haunt* and *as-wound*. 3

And this, too, is my paragraph now, though Meyer's text lurks beneath it like a palimpsest:

Both the place and the events of the slave trade haunt the Senegalese cultural memory, which rests in the collective experience of trauma and the place—the physical haunt—of its occurrence. As such, a Senegalese ethos derives from haunt and wound. Ethos-as-haunt demonstrates how location constitutes a people, its culture, traditions, stories, and history . . . . Simply put, the events that occur on a parcel of land lends it character to the people of that land . . . . With this summary of the slave trade as a starting point, I turn now to review the Western model of ethos and its potential as haunt. From this understanding of location . . . . I suggest a bridge between haunt and wound as it relates to a Senegalese ethos and the hopeful healing that can take place through an acknowledgement of that woundedness. The conclusion offers insight into Senegalese wisdom for the Westernized humanities and the possibility of healing the wound from two different perspectives: European and African.<sup>4</sup>

As I read Meyer's account of the Massacre at Wounded Knee, other massacres—at Soweto and at Thiaroye—came to mind: As much as the slave trade, these have come to define my sense of the "woundedness" of the African continent generally. Yet my mind wandered first to Jallianwala Bagh, also known as the Amritsar massacre. On 13 April 1919, Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer ordered troops of the British Indian Army to fire their rifles into a crowd of unarmed civilians in Jallianwala Bagh, killing at least 400, including forty-one children (Lloyd 2011). Curiously, I would not have known of the Amritsar massacre had I not seen the 1981 film *Gandhi* (Attenborough 1982), a British-Indian co-production starring Ben Kingsley.

I do not remember how old I was when I first saw *Gandhi*. I do remember very well this next nationwide media event; I believe it showed on Senegalese television in 1986 and, at the time of its showing, it thrust the slave trade back momentarily into the national consciousness. I am talking about the American TV miniseries, *Roots* (Chomsky 1977), based on the novel by Haley (1976). The novel combines two stories. The first is of Kunta Kinte, who was kidnapped in The Gambia (a country neighboring Senegal) in 1767 and sold as a slave in the British colony of Maryland. The second is of the character of the novelist himself, who—inspired by his grandmother's stories—spent twelve years researching his ancestry. His search led him back to Africa, to the Gambian village of Juffure<sup>5</sup> . There,

<sup>3</sup> Meyer's original reads:To understand Oglala Lakota ethos today, one must understand the importance of the experience of this massacre, which extends to the visuals, the emotions, the memories of the scene—that is, to the entire experience (Fixico 2003, p. 22). *It is the mythos of the massacre* that we must seek to understand. For the EuroAmerican bystander, it is easy to dismiss the Wounded Knee Massacre as having happened over 100 years ago to some group at some place; it is markedly different if one's cultural identity rests in a continual retelling—in effect, a reliving—of the Massacre. As Donald L. Fixico writes, "When retold, the experience comes alive again, recreating the experience by evoking the emotions of listeners, transcending past-present-future. Time does not imprison the story" (Fixico 2003, p. 22). The telling of these stories forms an integral part of Oglala ethos, both *as-haunt* and *as-wound*. (Meyer 2019, p. 4)

<sup>4</sup> Again, Meyer's original:Both the place and the events of the massacre haunt the Lakotan cultural memory, which rests in the collective experience of trauma and the place—the physical haunt—of its occurrence. As such, an Oglala Lakota ethos derives from haunt and wound. Ethos-as-haunt demonstrates how location constitutes a people, its culture, traditions, stories, and history . . . . Simply put, the events that occur on a parcel of land lends it character to the people on that land . . . . With this summary of the Wounded Knee Massacre as a starting point, I turn now to review the Western model of ethos and its potential as haunt. From this understanding of location, I suggest a bridge between haunt and wound as it relates to an Oglala Lakota ethos and the hopeful healing that can take place through an acknowledgement of that woundedness. The conclusion offers insight into Oglala wisdom for the Westernized humanities and the possibility of healing the wound from two different perspectives: EuroAmerican and Oglala. (Meyer 2019, p. 5)

<sup>5</sup> Referring to *Roots* leads us to the Algerian film *Little Senegal* directed by Rachid Bouchareb (Bouchareb 2001). The theme of the movie is somewhat the opposite of Haley's *Root* in the sense that the character Alloune (Sotigui Kouyaté), a tour guide at a Senegalese slave museum decided to go to America to live another more experimental dimension of the deportation, after the theoretical narration of the lave trade and the vision of a common origin. This would make him come to terms with the various realities of how African descendants feel and consider their past. He could experience the problem that we refer to with the 1956 Paris Congress of Black Writers and Artists in 1956 (see later). That trip reveals itself to be a true challenge to

the *griot* or tribal storyteller recounted the village history, which confirmed to the author that he was, in fact, great-great-great-great grandson of Kunta Kinte. The novel was published in 1976; the miniseries aired in the U.S. in 1977. It took nearly a decade to reach Senegalese viewers. What I remember is that Senegalese national television had had serious apprehensions during the airing of this TV series, as white people living in Senegal were being subjected to threats. Through a largely fictional portrayal, the history of the Senegambian wound had been retold and the sense of woundedness awakened. When history contains powder kegs, a government or group can try to hide them; eventually they will be found, and they will explode.

There is a lesson in this. Several times throughout their essay, "Positioning Ethos," Baumlin and Meyer describe reading and hearing synesthetically, as a means of seeing. For example: "The first step in healing ourselves, individually and collectively, is to unleash the self-expressive power of our storytelling: in effect, to make an appeal in good faith for a witness, in order 'to be seen' in our texts" (Baumlin and Meyer 2018, "Positioning," p. 19). One speaks, not just to be heard, *but to be seen*: By this means, one's ethos or self-image is "made present." I do not disagree with their rhetorical model. What I am learning is that *the image*, at times, must "speak first," in order to "give presence" to history. Visual media—film especially—has become the privileged mode of storytelling in contemporary world culture. What genuinely surprises me is that the textbook histories that I have learned (and even taught) rarely came fully to life for me *until I saw them mirrored in art*. As with the exhibition in French Nancy (where I saw, "as if" fully for the first time, an African rhinoceros and giraffe), the mediated "framing" of objects, places, and events allows us to see them better—or, at least, to see them *di*ff*erently*—and respond to them accordingly.

When I was a student in Diourbel, "*Apartheid est un crime contre l'humanité*" was written at the top of the chalk board of every classroom. "Soweto" used to ring in our ears as a cursed word. But it was only in 2003, long after I had left Africa, that I first watched the American film, *Cry Freedom* (Attenborough 1987)—which carved indelibly into my mind the images of the carnage that met black schoolchildren in apartheid South Africa. In June 1976, reacting to the imposition of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in local schools, children poured into the streets of Soweto in protest. (As a linguist by training, I can attest to the role of language in creating ethos, both individually and collectively.) There, they were met with fierce police brutality. The facts have been blurred, perhaps deliberately, but somewhere between 176 and 700 children were killed (Brown 2016).

Yet another massacre strikes closer to home, having occurred in Senegal during French colonial occupation. It took place in 1944 at the military camp of Thiaroye, a small village in the suburbs of Dakar. A group of Senegalese Tirailleurs were protesting to be paid for their military service. Mind you, they were among the African soldiers who had fought for the French Free Army in France, seeking its liberation from Nazi Germany. Against their protests, the French colonial troops responded with bullets. According to "official" records, between thirty-five and seventy Tirailleurs were gathered together in camp and gunned down; witnesses give a higher number, reporting more than 300 Senegalese deaths (Mourre 2017).

When I was growing up, *no one talked about Thiaroye*. The massacre took place on the first of December, which so happens to be the day in which I am penning this paper. As I write, what surprises me is the seeming lack of interest shown by the postcolonial Senegalese government; it is as if they wanted to forget. The French government's lack of interest is not surprising; in fact, the French did their best to ignore, deflect, deny. The general public did not learn of this massacre until 1988, when Senegalese Cineaste released Sembène Ousmane's film, *Camp de Thiaroye* (Sembène 1988). The film was immediately banned in France and remained so for seventeen years, until becoming available on DVD in 2005. Here, indeed, we see why we need more films written, directed, produced, and performed by

an "idealized view of the diaspora", and an experience of "the real and imagined community relationship among dispersed populations" (Letort 2014, p. 142).

than 300 Senegalese deaths (Mourre 2017).

Africans (Senegalese especially). Again, as Baumlin and Meyer (2018) remind us, we need to speak, in order to be heard, in order to be seen: Such is an assumption of rhetorical ethos. And the reverse may be true, too: Sometimes *we need to see* (or be seen), in order to know *what* to speak and *how* to be heard. (See Figure 5) and performed by Africans (Senegalese especially). Again, as Baumlin and Meyer (2018) remind us, we need to speak, in order to be heard, in order to be seen: Such is an assumption of rhetorical ethos. And the reverse may be true, too: Sometimes *we need to see* (or be seen), in order to know *what* to speak and *how* to be heard. (See Figure 5)

available on DVD in 2005. Here, indeed, we see why we need more films written, directed, produced,

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responded with bullets. According to "official" records, between thirty-five and seventy Tirailleurs were gathered together in camp and gunned down; witnesses give a higher number, reporting more

When I was growing up, *no one talked about Thiaroye*. The massacre took place on the first of December, which so happens to be the day in which I am penning this paper. As I write, what surprises me is the seeming lack of interest shown by the postcolonial Senegalese government; it is as if they wanted to forget. The French government's lack of interest is not surprising; in fact, the French did their best to ignore, deflect, deny. The general public did not learn of this massacre until 1988, when Senegalese Cineaste released Sembène Ousmane's film, *Camp de Thiaroye* (Sembène 1988).

**Figure 5.** "Thiaroye 44: Une Histoire Inoubliable." Street Mural in Dakar. Wikimedia Commons (photo by Erica Kowal). **Figure 5.** "Thiaroye 44: Une Histoire Inoubliable." Street Mural in Dakar. Wikimedia Commons (photo by Erica Kowal).

What is an individual or a social group made of? A common history and culture of course. But we should also add the impact of place, not just upon history and culture, but upon language. As a linguist, I study the cultural and psychosocial impact of naming. We could mention the classic example of the Inuits, whose language contains so many words for "snow." Since snow defines their world, of course they have names for its various qualities and conditions. Put simply, their language reflects their environment: They need those different words. Similarly, the Touareg living in the Sahara Desert have a broad vocabulary to describe the types of sands that surround them. Wolof, the vernacular language of Senegal, has similar examples. In wolof, the term *sedd* (cold) is used to qualify someone or something welcoming and attractive, while *tang* (hot) would qualify a person, voice, or attitude that is unwelcoming or unattractive. In many Western cultures, these terms are reversed, where *cold* is unwelcoming while *hot* is attractive. Now, let us add geography to language: In tropical countries like Senegal, one longs for coolness, whereas people in Northern climates might long for heat. The places we live in have an impact on our words, which function as a means "to see" the world. The world needs our words in order to be seen, and our words invoke the world as an What is an individual or a social group made of? A common history and culture of course. But we should also add the impact of place, not just upon history and culture, but upon language. As a linguist, I study the cultural and psychosocial impact of naming. We could mention the classic example of the Inuits, whose language contains so many words for "snow." Since snow defines their world, of course they have names for its various qualities and conditions. Put simply, their language reflects their environment: They need those different words. Similarly, the Touareg living in the Sahara Desert have a broad vocabulary to describe the types of sands that surround them. Wolof, the vernacular language of Senegal, has similar examples. In wolof, the term *sedd* (cold) is used to qualify someone or something welcoming and attractive, while *tang* (hot) would qualify a person, voice, or attitude that is unwelcoming or unattractive. In many Western cultures, these terms are reversed, where *cold* is unwelcoming while *hot* is attractive. Now, let us add geography to language: In tropical countries like Senegal, one longs for coolness, whereas people in Northern climates might long for heat. The places we live in have an impact on our words, which function as a means "to see" the world. The world needs our words in order to be seen, and our words invoke the world as an instrument of seeing.

instrument of seeing. The above may hold for objects and events outside of us, but what of the memories and mental images that inhabit our psychic spaces? How do we "give voice" to these, making them present to The above may hold for objects and events outside of us, but what of the memories and mental images that inhabit our psychic spaces? How do we "give voice" to these, making them present to consciousness? In other words: How do we name the wounds that we have repressed, whether individually or as a culture?

### **4. Connecting Words, Images, Memories**

The mythic seeks instead to unite, to synthesize, to assert wholeness in multiple or contrasting choices and interpretations. Mythos thus offers a synthetic and analogical, as opposed to analytic, mode of proof, one that discovers—indeed, celebrates—the diversity of truth.

—James S. Baumlin and Tita French Baumlin, "On the Psychology of the Pisteis" (Baumlin and Baumlin 1994, p. 106)

I never knew how deeply the slave trade had settled into my subconscious until I came across a poster image in a public service ad (Figure 6) campaign produced by the Transport Accident of truth.

individually or as a culture?

**4. Connecting Words, Images, Memories** 

Commission (Transport Accident Commission 1989) of Australia (Hébert 2011), the statutory insurer for road accidents in Victoria. Dating from 1989, its slogan is in colloquial Aussie English: "If you drink, then drive, you're a bloody idiot." The original image is anamorphic, a sort of visual puzzle. From one perspective, we imagine ourselves lying at the bottom of a deeply dug grave looking up at the sky; from another perspective, we are looking at a glass of frothy beer. An Australian would see the double entendre of grave and beer. I saw the Door of No Return. Was I projecting my own history onto this image? Gorée Island sits quite literally on the opposite end of the globe from Victoria, Australia. poster image in a public service ad (Figure 6) campaign produced by the Transport Accident Commission (TAC 1989) of Australia (Hébert 2011), the statutory insurer for road accidents in Victoria. Dating from 1989, its slogan is in colloquial Aussie English: "If you drink, then drive, you're a bloody idiot." The original image is anamorphic, a sort of visual puzzle. From one perspective, we imagine ourselves lying at the bottom of a deeply dug grave looking up at the sky; from another perspective, we are looking at a glass of frothy beer. An Australian would see the double entendre of grave and beer. I saw the Door of No Return. Was I projecting my own history onto this image? Gorée Island sits quite literally on the opposite end of the globe from Victoria, Australia.

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consciousness? In other words: How do we name the wounds that we have repressed, whether

The mythic seeks instead to unite, to synthesize, to assert wholeness in multiple or contrasting choices and interpretations. Mythos thus offers a synthetic and analogical, as opposed to analytic, mode of proof, one that discovers—indeed, celebrates—the diversity

—James S. Baumlin and Tita French Baumlin, "On the Psychology of the Pisteis" (Baumlin and

I never knew how deeply the slave trade had settled into my subconscious until I came across a

Baumlin 1994, p. 106)

**Figure 6.** Australian TAC Poster Vs. The Senegalese Door of No Return. Public Service Poster for the Transport Accident Commission (TAC), Australia. Door photo by Willem Proos (courtesy of travelpicturesgallery.com). **Figure 6.** Australian TAC Poster Vs. The Senegalese Door of No Return. Public Service Poster for the Transport Accident Commission (TAC), Australia. Door photo by Willem Proos (courtesy of travelpicturesgallery.com).

Since that childhood trip to Gorée, the image of the Door of No Return has haunted me. It comes to mind in radically different contexts and occasions. I see its outline in places surprisingly dissimilar. In December 2018, during my latest trip to Senegal, I attended a conference at Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar's most prestigious university. For the first time, in front of a Senegalese audience, I spoke of the Door of No Return and its symbolisms. And I asked if others experienced it similarly, as a Since that childhood trip to Gorée, the image of the Door of No Return has haunted me. It comes to mind in radically different contexts and occasions. I see its outline in places surprisingly dissimilar. In December 2018, during my latest trip to Senegal, I attended a conference at Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar's most prestigious university. For the first time, in front of a Senegalese audience, I spoke of the Door of No Return and its symbolisms. And I asked if others experienced it similarly,as a haunting presence. My intuition was confirmed: It is, indeed, an image that we carry within us, defining us as Senegalese.

The haunting continues, I should add. When in Toronto in August 2019, I visited Niagara Falls with my family. (See Figure 7) Under "Horseshoe Falls"—the Canadian side of Niagara—we did the touristy thing and took the tour, "The Journey Behind the Falls." Tunnels have been carved through the bedrock under the falls. There is a portal cut straight through the rock, allowing one to stand behind the falls; from there, one has a breathtaking view of the rush of water crashing down. Walking down that tunnel leading to that "doorway" portal reminded me of the Door of No Return. How could it not? (See Figure 8) Certainly there is no return from this portal, should one pass through it to the water falling from above. The power of the falls is said to be monstrous, brutal and heavy enough to crush bones. The image is fascinating and frightening, just as the sound of the water is deafening.

deafening.

deafening.

defining us as Senegalese.

defining us as Senegalese.

haunting presence. My intuition was confirmed: It is, indeed, an image that we carry within us,

haunting presence. My intuition was confirmed: It is, indeed, an image that we carry within us,

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The haunting continues, I should add. When in Toronto in August 2019, I visited Niagara Falls with my family. (See Figure 7) Under "Horseshoe Falls"—the Canadian side of Niagara—we did the touristy thing and took the tour, "The Journey Behind the Falls." Tunnels have been carved through the bedrock under the falls. There is a portal cut straight through the rock, allowing one to stand behind the falls; from there, one has a breathtaking view of the rush of water crashing down. Walking down that tunnel leading to that "doorway" portal reminded me of the Door of No Return. How could it not? (See Figure 8) Certainly there is no return from this portal, should one pass through it

The haunting continues, I should add. When in Toronto in August 2019, I visited Niagara Falls with my family. (See Figure 7) Under "Horseshoe Falls"—the Canadian side of Niagara—we did the touristy thing and took the tour, "The Journey Behind the Falls." Tunnels have been carved through the bedrock under the falls. There is a portal cut straight through the rock, allowing one to stand behind the falls; from there, one has a breathtaking view of the rush of water crashing down. Walking down that tunnel leading to that "doorway" portal reminded me of the Door of No Return. How could it not? (See Figure 8) Certainly there is no return from this portal, should one pass through it

**Figure 7.** Niagara Falls, Canadian Side. Wikimedia Commons (photo by Cjsinghpup). **Figure 7.** Niagara Falls, Canadian Side. Wikimedia Commons (photo by Cjsinghpup). **Figure 7.** Niagara Falls, Canadian Side. Wikimedia Commons (photo by Cjsinghpup).

**Figure 8.** "Behind Niagara Falls" (photo by Dalla Malé Fofana). **Figure 8.** "Behind Niagara Falls" (photo by Dalla Malé Fofana). **Figure 8.** "Behind Niagara Falls" (photo by Dalla Malé Fofana).

Perhaps my fascination with portals is mythic—archetypal in the Jungian sense—in which case, my cultural experience reflects a "collective memory" belonging to the human species. I am reminded of the common phrase, "light at the end of the tunnel." In an article, "There Are Seven Types of Near-Death Experiences" (MacDonald 2015), Fiona MacDonald cites the work of Sam Parnia, director of Perhaps my fascination with portals is mythic—archetypal in the Jungian sense—in which case, my cultural experience reflects a "collective memory" belonging to the human species. I am reminded of the common phrase, "light at the end of the tunnel." In an article, "There Are Seven Types of Near-Death Experiences" (MacDonald 2015), Fiona MacDonald cites the work of Sam Parnia, director of Perhaps my fascination with portals is mythic—archetypal in the Jungian sense—in which case, my cultural experience reflects a "collective memory" belonging to the human species. I am reminded of the common phrase, "light at the end of the tunnel." In an article, "There Are Seven Types of Near-Death Experiences" (Macdonald 2015), Fiona MacDonald cites the work of Sam Parnia, director of resuscitation research at Stony Brook University School of Medicine. The testimonies of people who have been brought back to life after suffering fatal accidents are thematically consistent, according to Dr. Parma: Many imagine themselves moving through a tunnel, at the end of which is a brilliantly shining light (see Figure 9). Mythically, symbolically, we are beckoned to a gateway-passage leading to an unknowable but inevitable void. Whether this mental image has spiritual or medical origins is irrelevant: The point is that the tunnel, portal, and light form *as real an experience* as any other mental or physical event undergone by survivors of near-death. And, typically, it is a world-changing experience, forever changing a person's understanding and expectations of life and death.

resuscitation research at Stony Brook University School of Medicine. The testimonies of people who have been brought back to life after suffering fatal accidents are thematically consistent, according to Dr. Parma: Many imagine themselves moving through a tunnel, at the end of which is a brilliantly shining light (see Figure 9). Mythically, symbolically, we are beckoned to a gateway-passage leading to an unknowable but inevitable void. Whether this mental image has spiritual or medical origins is

experience, forever changing a person's understanding and expectations of life and death.

**Figure 9.** "Light at the End of the Tunnel." Wikimedia Commons (photo by Stiller Beobachter). **Figure 9.** "Light at the End of the Tunnel." Wikimedia Commons (photo by Stiller Beobachter).

Returning from archetypal psychology to Senegalese history: Passage through the Door of No Return certainly meant death. It was physical death for many, as millions of Africans died from the bad conditions of prison houses and the prison ships transporting them to the Americas. But it was a death of self-identity for all, as once-free men and women were turned into slaves; and, if they survived the passage, their New World "home" would be one of brutal treatment and ceaseless, backbreaking toil. The enslaved Africans were typically renamed by white owners, which could result in them losing everything: name, family, religions, language, all. Returning from archetypal psychology to Senegalese history: Passage through the Door of No Return certainly meant death. It was physical death for many, as millions of Africans died from the bad conditions of prison houses and the prison ships transporting them to the Americas. But it was a death of self-identity for all, as once-free men and women were turned into slaves; and, if they survived the passage, their New World "home" would be one of brutal treatment and ceaseless, backbreaking toil.The enslaved Africans were typically renamed by white owners, which could result in them losing everything: name, family, religions, language, all.

The testimonies of black people who participated to the 1956 Paris Conference—attended by black personalities from around the world—showed how wide and deep the wounds of diaspora have been. The Conference celebrated the solidarity of a people united by ancestral origins and skin color and common experience. The "Back to Africa" movement was founded at this time. While Senegalese Africans still suffered under colonial rule (independence from France would come in 1960), the world's Africans were looking back to the place of their origins. What they were seeking was not a physical place merely but the meaning—the mythos—of that place. It is the linguistic, historical, social, psychological, and mythic unity of Senegalese ethos to which I now turn. The testimonies of black people who participated to the 1956 Paris Conference—attended by black personalities from around the world—showed how wide and deep the wounds of diaspora have been. The Conference celebrated the solidarity of a people united by ancestral origins and skin color and common experience. The "Back to Africa" movement was founded at this time. While Senegalese Africans still suffered under colonial rule (independence from France would come in 1960), the world's Africans were looking back to the place of their origins. What they were seeking was not a physical place merely but the meaning—the mythos—of that place. It is the linguistic, historical, social, psychological,and mythic unity of Senegalese ethos to which I now turn.

#### **5. Returning to Gorée 5. Returning to Gorée**

About the time the King's soldiers came, the eldest of these four sons, Kunta, when he had about 16 rains, went away from his village to chop wood to make a drum ... and he was never seen again … About the time the King's soldiers came, the eldest of these four sons, Kunta, when he had about 16 rains, went away from his village to chop wood to make a drum . . . and he was never seen again . . .

> —Tribal story as told to Alex Haley ((Haley 1972), "My Furthest," p. 12) —Tribal story as told to Alex Haley ((Haley 1972), "My Furthest," p. 12)

In contrast to modern notions of the person or self, [classical] ethos emphasizes the conventional rather than idiosyncratic, the public rather than the private. The most concrete meaning given for the term [ethos] in the Greek lexicon is "a habitual gathering place," and I suspect that it is upon this image of people gathering together in a public place, sharing experiences and ideas, that its meaning as character rests.

—S. Michael Halloran, "Aristotle's Concept of Ethos" (Halloran 1982, p. 60)

There is ethos in naming. To name is to assert power, ownership: We see this in the renaming of slaves (as Kunta Kinte's white master presumably renamed him Toby—a "fine" English working-class moniker). We see this in places, as well. In its history of colonization (Ginio 2008), the Portuguese named it *Ila de Palma*. The Dutch renamed it *Good Rade*. Under French rule, it became Gorée. The meaning of that name could illustrate its strategic location. With the slave trade's transit points reaching from the northwest tip of the continent down to The Gambia, Senegal sat right in the center of the trade. Reaching out into the Atlantic, the Dakar archipelago is the nearest point on the continent to the Americas. Some kilometres farther west sits the island whose harbor offered safe haven for anchoring ships: hence the name *Good Rade* (UNESCO/NHK 2019). But if the name suggests its excellent location for slave traders, it certainly was the opposite for the Africans who were brought there in chains, to await their passage<sup>6</sup> .

From a linguistic perspective, it is easy to see how Good Rade becomes Gorée. Consonant clusters are an unusual pattern in wolof, which would explain how the cluster "d" and "r" in (Goo)d+R(ade) would be simplified. Wolof language is also unfamiliar with closed syllables: The final consonant "d," which ends the word *rade*, and the neutral ending of /reid/ would turn the sound /reid/ turns into /re/. I should admit that the origin of the word Gorée has been well studied. But, for Senegalese, the word bears another symbolic meaning as sustained by wolof language. Indeed, the word goree /glre/ does exist in wolof and is polysemic, /glre/ being an adjective that refers to the quality of a person who is physically free (as opposed to being a slave); at the same time, it designates a person who has high and noble values. If we take a close look at its variants, the word /gor/ refers to "man," "manhood," and "courage."<sup>7</sup> As a verb, it refers to the idea of cutting-loose with violence, or separating an element from where it belongs, the way one would chop a branch from a tree (N'diaye-Correard and Schmidt 1979; Ndao 2002).

Though a small island of 28 hectares and 1300 inhabitants (N'diaye 2006), Gorée personifies the African slave trade. It is, in effect, a "memory island," symbolic of the slave trade and its suffering. Its strategic location made Gorée "the centre of the rivalry between European nations for control of the slave trade" (UNESCO/NHK 2019). Though I have focused on *la Maison des Esclaves*, the island is said to have held more than a dozen slave houses, among which was "the Castle, a rocky plateau covered with fortifications which dominate the Island," and the *Relais de l'Espadon*, former residence of the French governor" (UNESCO/NHK 2019). Clearly, the island's past belongs to its present. If its ethos is to heal, the mythos of the island must move beyond trauma. It can do so by becoming a site of remembrance and reflection, as well as of reconciliation: "The Island of Gorée is now a pilgrimage destination for the African diaspora, a foyer for contact between the West and Africa, and a space for exchange and dialogue between cultures through the confrontation of ideals of reconciliation and forgiveness" (BBC News 2007).

I find hope in the BBC News article cited above, but also find it a bit optimistic: In these many respects, Gorée remains a work-in-progress. Though its role in the slave trade is regularly questioned by some, there have been moments of formal commemoration. In 1944, the colonial administration listed Gorée as a historic site. It was placed on Senegal's National Heritage List in 1975 and on

<sup>6</sup> We cannot talk about Gorée Island without mentioning divergent historical readings (for further details, see Philip D. Curtin or David Eltis) of the slavery past at Gorée Island. For some historians, there is lack of requisite evidence for the House of Slaves to be considered an official site of slave deportation. Questions are indeed raised about the actual number of slaves deported or about the shoreline being possibly too rocky or not deep enough for ships to dock near the fort.These questions are certainly important for historians and specialists who need more measurable facts for the site to be considered either a cultural or a historical symbol. But African locals totally ignore and dismiss polemics and claims about the minor role (if any) of the House of Slave in the African slave trade. They consider those claims as attempts to erase this so iconic print of a crime on Mankind. In a way, they experience the same feeling as Jews in front of claims that deem Shoah to be fabricated despite many formal evidence. For Africans, since the slave trade is factual and the House of Slaves a physical symbol that connects them to its atrocities, then they would not wonder at all about how important the role it played into it.

<sup>7</sup> Curiously, this mirrors the etymology of English "virtue," where the Latin *virtus*—meaning nobility of character—derives from *vir*, for "man." Hence, *virtus* is the quality of high and noble character associated with "manliness."

forgiveness" (BBC News 2007).

the World Heritage List in 1978 (BBC News 2007). And foreign dignitaries have come to pay their respects, none more welcome than the 2013 visit of U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle (see Figure 10). Current ordinances regulate new construction, ensuring that historic sites are well preserved and protected. There are no private automobiles. With its colonial-style buildings, rural flavor and lack of traffic noise, crossing the ocean to Gorée feels like crossing a time barrier—quite the opposite of Dakar, the busy, noisy, hectic capital city of Senegal. listed Gorée as a historic site. It was placed on Senegal's National Heritage List in 1975 and on the World Heritage List in 1978 (BBC News 2007). And foreign dignitaries have come to pay their respects, none more welcome than the 2013 visit of U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle (see Figure 10). Current ordinances regulate new construction, ensuring that historic sites are well preserved and protected. There are no private automobiles. With its colonial-style buildings, rural flavor and lack of traffic noise, crossing the ocean to Gorée feels like crossing a time barrier quite the opposite of Dakar, the busy, noisy, hectic capital city of Senegal.

by some, there have been moments of formal commemoration. In 1944, the colonial administration

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ethos is to heal, the mythos of the island must move beyond trauma. It can do so by becoming a site of remembrance and reflection, as well as of reconciliation: "The Island of Gorée is now a pilgrimage destination for the African diaspora, a foyer for contact between the West and Africa, and a space for exchange and dialogue between cultures through the confrontation of ideals of reconciliation and

**Figure 10.** Barack Obama Greeted by Gorée Islanders. (Official White House photo by Pete Souza). **Figure 10.** Barack Obama Greeted by Gorée Islanders. (Official White House photo by Pete Souza).

#### **6. Conclusion: Healing the Wounds of Colonialism 6. Conclusions: Healing the Wounds of Colonialism**

Ku xam'ul fa nga jëm dellu fa nga jugé (He who doesn't know where he is heading toward should go back to where he is from). Ku xam'ul fa nga jëm dellu fa nga jugé (He who doesn't know where he is heading toward should go back to where he is from).

> —Wolof proverb —Wolof proverb

None of us lives without a history; each of us is a narrative. We're always standing some place in our lives, and there is always a tale of how we came to stand there, though few of us have marked carefully the dimensions of the place where we are or kept time with the tale of how we came to be there. None of us lives without a history; each of us is a narrative. We're always standing some place in our lives, and there is always a tale of how we came to stand there, though few of us have marked carefully the dimensions of the place where we are or kept time with the tale of how we came to be there.

> —Jim W. Corder, "Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love" (Corder 1985, p. 16) —Jim W. Corder, "Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love" (Corder 1985, p. 16)

The future of Senegal lies in facing our wounds and haunts, instead of repressing them and running away. We need to speak them, sing them, write about them, turning them into art. There are lessons to learn from the history of the slave trade. But that is only a start: We must face the broader history of colonialism, if we are to evolve toward a more prosperous, just, hopeful future.

We cannot simply erase a half-century of African colonization (Ross 2007). The case of Senegal might be harder than other states regionally, since Dakar was the capital city of AOF (French West Africa) and Senegal enjoyed some special privileges, compared to other colonies. Thus, Senegal was among those former colonies that did not fight hard for independence. After the colonizers left in 1960, Senegalese political leaders continued to look to France for guidance. Their children studied abroad,

becoming not cosmopolitan so much as Europeanized. This led Franz Fanon to write his *Peau noir masque blancs* (Fanon 1952): "Black Skin, White Masks."

Is the modern Senegalese ethos politically and culturally "independent," or is it colonized, still? An inferiority complex remains: We seem to suffer from what Marley (Bob Marley and the Wailers 1980) called "mental slavery"—a habit of looking to Europe for standards and terms of "progress." Economically, the most flagrant symbol of "mental slavery" is the West African currency Franc CFA, which is under French government control (Sylla 2017). If the nation's political leaders remained Eurocentric in orientation, its spiritual leaders quickly broke free from mental domination. Following in the footsteps of India's Mahatma Gandhi and America's Martin Luther King, Jr., Senegal's spiritual leaders understood the futility of violence; instead, they practiced—successfully—the principles of nonviolent civil disobedience. The French colonial authorities had little difficulty dealing with political upstarts. It was people like Ahmadou Bamba and El Hadji Malick Sy who confused them, posing the biggest challenges. As Sufi Muslims, they practiced (and preached) a religion of unity, peace, contemplation, and resilience. Their spiritual work ensured that Senegal remained a peace-loving and peace-seeking nation—one of the very few in Africa never to have known or witnessed civil war or major cycles of violence (Fofana 2015).

There is an aspect of Senegalese ethos that I have hinted at but not yet noted explicitly: As much as land, our life belongs to the sea—which is not always a friendly companion. Even today, Gorée island is not of easy access. The Atlantic Ocean acts like a barrier to cross, and it takes a ferry to get there. Deep water holds mystery for African polytheist former generations. And, even now, there are periodic incidents of fishermen "taken" by the sea, which keeps alive the myth of *Mamy wata* (mommy water). The tragedy of the ferry Le Joola only increases this myth. Le Joola was a Senegalese government-owned ferry that capsized off the coast of The Gambia on 26 September 2002. This "loss of an estimated 1800 lives [is] recognised as one of Africa's worst-ever maritime disasters," being "the second-worst non-military disaster in maritime history" (Barry 2003). Nevertheless, younger generations tend to give less consideration to these traditional fears. As proof, we could point to the number of young people who die in the sea (a death toll of 40 yearly) between June to October, when schools are closed. Young people spend a lot of time on the beach—without learning how to swim properly (Agence France Press 2018).

Poignantly, economic stresses have led to a modern exodus of Africans, who cross the Mediterranean as illegal immigrants in hopes of reaching more affluent European shores (Gueye 2006). Their poverty is reflected in the life rafts and small, unseaworthy vessels that they crowd into, desperate for a better life. The year 2006 was especially bad for young Senegalese, who left West Africa in wooden pirogues, headed for Italy and Spain (Fofana 2017). *Barca wala barzakh* was their motto: Faced with unbearable poverty, they chose *Barça* (Barcelona), or *Barzakh* (death). Senegalese film director Moussa Dieng Kala (Mbaye 2006) asked one of the illegal immigration survivors, "Are you aware that by boarding in wooden pirogues from Senegal to Spain, you are committing suicide?" He was answered, "How can a person who is already dead commit suicide?" (APA News 2006). Over the past decade, thousands of sub-Saharan Africans, many Senegalese, have drowned in this attempt. Indeed, even as I was penning this paper, there are reports of people dying at sea, trying to reach Spain. Of course, poverty remains great in Africa. The allure of European emigration, illegal or otherwise, feeds the myth of a European paradise vs. an African wilderness. This myth reinforces the African inferiority complex.<sup>8</sup> Put simply: For most who risk life at sea, the expectations of a better life prove a false hope. (What kind of welcome can an illegal immigrant expect?).

<sup>8</sup> Again, the myth of European superiority is real, though its expressions are often subtle. I have already mentioned political leaders who keep replicating policies dictated form Europe. We consume European entertainments—films especially—rather than make our own. And even sadder, in my opinion, are the many black Africans, women mostly, who resort to chemical products to lighten their skin. The effects of colonialism remain with us, still.

Still, not all stories of the ocean end in tragedy. Every summer, the annual Dakar-Gorée Swimming Race is held, organized between the capital city of Dakar and Gorée Island. The region's best come to compete in this well-publicized event. To swim competitively in this 5.2 km race requires both speed and endurance. Paradoxically, the annual *Traversée Dakar-Gorée* serves to shorten the distance between city and island, creating solidarity. True, the slaves who tried to escape by swimming could not have made it, given their chains and the 5 kg cast-iron ball attached to their feet—or to their necks. Still, "it's not just a swim race," as Haque (Haque 2018) writes: "it's a tribute to those who remain defiant, refusing their fate as slaves and instead swimming for freedom. [It is] a celebration of freedom and resistance and of the human spirit's ability to overcome adversity." On that positive note, I end this essay.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declare no conflicts of interest.

### **References**


Bob Marley and the Wailers. 1980. Redemption Song. In *Uprising*. Kingston: Tuff Gong.

Bouchareb, Rachid. 2001. *Little Senegal*. Screenplay by Rachid Bouchareb and Olivier Lorelle. Berlin: 3B Productions et Taunus Film.

Brown, Julian. 2016. *The Road to Soweto: Resistance and the Uprising of 16 June 1976*. Auckland Park: Jacana Media.


© 2020 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

## *Article* **Exploring Ethos in Contemporary Ghana**

### **Gladys Nyarko Ansah \*and Augustina Edem Dzregah**

Department of English, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana; ADzregah@ug.edu.gh

**\*** Correspondence: gansah@ug.edu.gh

Received: 22 June 2020; Accepted: 10 July 2020; Published: 15 July 2020

**Abstract:** In this article, we discuss contemporary Ghanaian ethos reflecting on female sexual behavior as a discursive construction that shifts and changes across time and space. Borrowing from Nedra Reynold's concept of ethos as a location, we examine the various social and discourse spaces of different rhetors on female sexual behavior in Ghana and how each establishes ethos through identity formations and language use from various positions of authority. With multiethnic, multilingual, and multiple religious perspectives within the Ghanaian population, how does ethos and moral authority speak persuasively on female sexual behavior? We examine contemporary discourses governing normative female sexual behavior and presentation as revealed in both proverbs and social media to drive the discussion toward how these discourses of female sexual behavior and ethos are discursively constructed in contemporary Ghanaian society.

**Keywords:** contemporary ethos; Ghana; dialogic; heteroglossia; postmodern discourses; proverbs; sexual identity; sexual presentation; conservative values; tradition

### **1. Introduction**

In Book 3 of his *Rhetoric*, Aristotle discusses proverbs (Gr. *paroimiai*) under the heading of *lexis* or style (3.11.14); that is, as figures of speech that contribute to the speaker's projection of a favorable self-image. Discussing Aristotle, George A. Kennedy (1991) describes proverbs as "witnesses," in which the testimony they provide comes from the community, not from an individual (p. 108). They represent, as it were, the collective "voice" of conservative culture. In addition, "some proverbs," Aristotle notes, "are also maxims" (2.21.10), in that they contribute directly to persuasion. By Aristotle's own authority, we turn to Book 2 of the *Rhetoric* and its discussion of maxims (Gr. *gnom¯ oi¯* ) as structures, not just of style, but of argument"

"In regard to the use of maxims, it will most readily be evident on what subjects, and on what occasions, and by whom it is appropriate that maxims should be employed in speeches . . . . Now, a maxim is a statement, not however concerning particulars, as, for instance, what sort of a man Iphicrates was, but general; it does not even deal with all general things, . . . but with the objects of human actions, and with what should be chosen or avoided with reference to them. And as the enthymeme<sup>1</sup> is, we may say, the syllogism dealing with such things, maxims are the premises or conclusions of enthymemes without the syllogism. For example: "No man who is sensible ought to have his children taught to be excessively clever," is a maxim; but when the why and the wherefore are added, the whole makes an enthymeme; for instance, "for, not to speak of the charge of idleness brought against them, they earn jealous hostility from the citizens." (2.21.2-5)

<sup>1</sup> In Aristotelian thinking, an enthymeme is a short (incomplete) argument that involves contradictions (Rapp and Zalta 2010) because one of its premises for achieving syllogism (a three-part argument with two premises and a conclusion) is assumed rather than clearly stated.

Proverbs and maxims, thus, are invitations to an audience's assent. Strictly speaking, a maxim does not need to be explained (in effect, to be built into an enthymeme). Rather, a maxim persuades because it claims common sense wisdom as "already known" or "generally agreed" (2.21.5).

By building proverbs into his speech, the rhetor taps into the common sentiments of a community, thereby gaining "cultural authority" (a vital component of ethos). More than lexis and even, perhaps, more than logos, the gnomic utterances of proverbs and maxims contribute to a speaker's ethos. Yet not every speaker can employ proverbs or maxims decorously and effectively, as Aristotle suggests:

The use of maxims is suitable for one who is advanced in years, and in regard to things in which one has experience; since the use of maxims before such an age is unseemly, as also is story-telling; and to speak about things of which one has no experience shows foolishness and lack of education. A sufficient proof of this is that rustics especially are fond of coining maxims and ready to make display of them. (2.21.9)

Let us summarize this discussion: According to Aristotle, a proverb is a gnomic or sententious statement derived from tradition and most suited to be spoken by men (and we would add, women) of a particular age and socioeconomic status.

The above definition applies to speakers in ancient Greece. To what extent does it apply to contemporary Ghana? The specific focus of this essay—the use of proverbs in the Ghanaian languages of Akan and Ewe—recapitulates much of the description above. In Ghanaian society, the proverb expresses the "collective 'voice'" of traditional (hence, conservative) culture. Traditionally, these are "handed down" quite literally from one generation to the next. Though women as well as men deploy them, the proverbs under analysis here seek to set norms and bounds upon women's (sexual) morality and behaviors.

Ghana today finds itself in transit ethically and ethotically, in that the traditional proverbs (and the conservative sexual morality they undergird) are pressured by different and more modern texts and voices. The proverbs mouthed and taught by parents and grandparents are coming into collision with new voices—a generation of women who counter the older sexist norms that allow men with money and power to exploit women—all the while blaming the women for sexual immorality. The masculinist "double standard" preached in these traditional proverbs is being tested and questioned by young Ghanaian women today, who have access to the technologies of social media. These new media platforms—Twitter in particular—allow women to "construct an ethos" that counters conventional or conservative morality. Yet this same media is cohabited by multiple voices representing the spectrum of Ghanaian society of old and young, male and female, rich and struggling. Within this media, the old proverbs continue to wield their normative control of Ghanaian attitudes towards woman's roles and behaviors. It is for this reason that we declare Ghanaian society to be "in transit," ethically and ethotically.

Before proceeding to an analysis of Ghanaian proverbs, we need a working definition of ethos. Let us begin, then, by noting a rift in current scholarship: In the classical Aristotelian model, two versions have arisen. The first (and most commonly cited) version holds that persuasion "through character . . . should result from the speech" and "not from a previous opinion that the speaker is a certain kind of person" (Rhetoric 1356a as cited in Baumlin and Meyer 2018). The second derives from this Special Issue on Ethos: James S. Baumlin and Craig A. Meyer explain: "If trust comes 'from the speech' solely, then the speaker's ethos is fashioned from within discourse and becomes part of the discourse in its totality." Aristotle elaborates:

But since rhetoric is concerned with making a judgment . . . it is necessary not only to look to the argument, that it may be demonstrative and persuasive but also [for the speaker] to construct a view of himself as a certain kind of person and to prepare the judge; for it makes much difference in regard to persuasion . . . that the speaker seem to be a certain kind of person and that his hearers suppose him to be a certain kind of person and that his hearers suppose him to be disposed in a certain way. (Rhetoric 1377b as cited in Baumlin and Meyer 2018)

Within this rhetorical model, Aristotle illustrates a speaker "construct[s] a view of" themselves, a verbal performance occurring within the speech. However, a socially-constructed model of ethos privileges culture over self and, thereby, reduces the self to behaviors in the context of the culturally accepted norms, proverbs, and participation in the traditions of the culture. Karen Burke LeFevre (1987) notes "Aristotle's Rhetoric presupposes a social context" (LeFevre 1987, Invention, p. 45). She continues:

Perhaps most pertinent to a social perspective is Aristotle's concept of ethos . . . [which] arises from the relationship between the individual and the community. "Ethos," says Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, "does not refer to your peculiarities as an individual but to the ways in which you reflect the characteristics and qualities that are valued by your culture or group. In Aristotle's view, ethos cannot exist in isolation; by definition it requires possible or actual others . . . . [I]n fact, the Greek meaning for "ethos" as "a habitual gathering place" calls forth an image of people coming together . . . . Ethos, we might say, appears in that socially created space, in the "between," the point of intersection between speaker or writer and listener or reader." (LeFevre 1987, Invention, pp. 45–46)

In contemporary Ghana, we see the latter version of ethos at play, though we look to the possibility that Ghanaian women can, in time, construct themselves in liberatory ways.

The contemporary Ghanaian woman wears her inherited ethos proudly; this ethos, this "cultural dress," is woven from multiple texts whose components include the traditional proverbs governing sexual norms and behaviors and their own movement toward creating a contemporary ethos of themselves. In this essay, we explore the ways that social media has added a "new voice" to the polyphony of Ghanaian popular discourse and the range of responses that this "new voice" has generated.

### **2. A New Voice in a Traditional Environment**

Priscilla Opoku-Kwarteng, more commonly known as Ebony Reigns, was born on 16 February 1997. The self-proclaimed 1990s bad gyal<sup>2</sup> dropped out of secondary school to take up a music career, releasing her first hit single song in December 2015. Both her personality and music brand were perceived by many Ghanaians as openly violating, contradicting, and/or challenging the traditional moral code on female sexual behavior.

On 28 November 2017, Manasseh Azure Awuni, a high-ranking, award-winning investigative journalist in Ghana published, "Manasseh's Folder: A Love Letter to Ebony." This open letter to Ebony Reigns, a 20-year-old, award-winning songstress, who was making headlines in Ghana for provocative behavior, was full of translated proverbs and offered general advice and a warning from Awuni to Reigns over what he described as her nudity during her musical performances. He asked her to focus on music and eschew nudity. In his letter, Awuni tried to establish his credibility (ethos) as a wise, elder male. His use of proverbs spoke to the virtues valued by his Ghanaian audience and culture. For instance, he writes "our elders have taught us that a wise child is not spoken to in plain words but in proverbs" (Awuni 2017). This quote is his understanding of a common proverb in Ghana that exists in some indigenous Ghanaian languages (e.g., Akan and Ewe) and suggests that if Reigns is wise, she will heed the traditional voices of the culture. More importantly, he completes that paragraph noting her similarities to the story of the "mad women of Kete-Krachi" (Awuni 2017). The mad women of Kete-Krachi, according to Awuni, references a young woman who spoke loudly or offensively in the town she lived, and she was so ambitious, she wore herself out and could only warn the next young

<sup>2</sup> The term is believed to mean total opposite of a "good girl". In Jamaican Patois, it refers to a girl who does things that are deemed unacceptable by society, for instance, a highly promiscuous girl/female or a girl/female who makes a name for herself without conforming to what society sees as "right" for women. (https://jamaicanpatwah.com/term/Bad-Gyal/1796# .Xvx3WfIaT2Q).

women in hopes that they did not follow in the same steps (Awuni 2014 "Manasseh's Folder: Mensa Otabil"). Reigns, he explains, is very talented musically, but she will only be remembered for her nakedness and not her talent.

Awuni's letter gained traction on social media and was shared 11,900 times and received 514 comments on Facebook and myjoyonline.com. While a majority of the comments congratulated Awuni and affirmed his position in condemning Reigns's behavior and even added their own proverbs (e.g., "a housefly that refuses to heed advice will follow the corpse to the grave"); others disagreed with Awuni, especially over his description of nudity, but these responses spoke with a modern voice and avoided proverbs (e.g., "Call it seductive dressing but certainly not nudity . . . otherwise it makes us hypocrites for I can't count the number of ladies I see every day dressed seductively"). Several voices chimed in on this example of normative female sexual behavior in contemporary Ghanaian society. Indeed, Awuni himself admits this in his letter when he says, "in this era of Facebook and WhatsApp, the wisest of our generation do not seem to be able to wrap their heads around the simplest of proverbs or the ancient wisdom of speech with which words were woven" (Awuni 2017 "Manasseh's Folder"). In other words, even though traditional rhetorical tools such as proverbs may have culturally encoded an ethos on female sexual behavior (among other things) in Ghanaian society, they may no longer be the main authority in social matters. More importantly, modern discourse tools, (e.g., Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter) may carry as much ethos, perhaps more, as proverbs in contemporary Ghanaian society.

In a socioculturally and religiously diversified country, there will be multiple voices on any subject matter including female sexual behavior. How is ethos, regarding the character and authority to speak persuasively on female sexual behavior, achieved in this sociocultural space? Who has the final say on matters of female sexual behavior in contemporary Ghanaian society?

While these two traditions of the classical period remain useful in the contemporary study of rhetoric, they appear "inadequate for postmodern epistemologies" (Johanna Schmertz 1999, p. 86). In postmodern thought, ethos is regarded as a discursive construction by both speaker and audience where neither speaker nor hearer has the final word because there is a rich tradition of conflicting interpretations.

In discussing African ethics, Kwame Gyekye (2010) describes ethics (in part) in a way similar to Wade Nobles (1972) definition of ethos:

The ethics of a society is embedded in the ideas and beliefs about what is right or wrong, what is good or bad character; it is also embedded in the conceptions of satisfactory social relations and attitudes held by the members of the society; it is embedded, furthermore, in the forms and patterns of behavior that are considered by members of the society to bring about social harmony and cooperative living. (p. 1)

In addition, the concept of ethos has been either directly or indirectly evoked by feminist rhetoricians particularly in discussing women's agency. For instance, Kathleen J. Ryan and her compatriots have called on (feminist) rhetoricians to rethink ethos and to define it in ecological terms, arguing that defining ethos in such terms "requires a consideration of an ecology of forces around ethos construction-not only social constructs like race and gender but also relations of power, and materiality (things and places)" (p. 1, 3). Similarly, Johanna Schmertz (1999) defines ethos (for feminism) as "neither manufactured nor fixed, neither tool nor character, but rather the stopping points which the subject (re)negotiates her own essence to call upon whatever agency that essence enables" (p. 86).

### **3. Contextualizing Proverbs**

We analyzed selected proverbs that are common in Ghana regarding normative female sexual behavior to drive some of the discussion toward how discourses on female sexual ethos have been created in contemporary Ghanaian society. First, starting with the proverbs from Awuni's letter to Reigns and the comments that followed, we focus on proverbs that speak to normative female sexual behavior in Ghana, most notably Noah K. Dzobo's African Proverbs texts and Peggy Appiah, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Ivor Agyeman-Duah's Bu Me Be: Proverbs of the Akans, which are both published and widely circulated collections of Ewe and Akan proverbs. Secondly, we examine the ways in which the general Ghanaian public responded to discourses surrounding Reigns through various social media platforms, which create an individual sexual identity that is not familiar to many contemporary Ghanaians as "culturally Ghanaian".

For us, proverbs provide a cultural opening to explore Ghanaian ethos. Of course, proverbs are typically defined as short, pithy sayings that express traditionally held truths or pieces of advice and are usually based on common sense or experience. Proverbs tend to be a source of dominant ideologies, because they are believed to reflect a people's philosophy, cultural, and ethical values. Proverbs have been studied widely across disciplines and across cultures; some examples include, Irish (Fred Norris Robinson 1945), English (Frank Percy Wilson 1994), Chinese (Lister 1974), and Yiddish (Beatrice Silverman-Weinreich 1981). Proverbs play an important role in many communities, especially those that are predominantly oral, serving both as a memory bank for preserving and as a vehicle for transmitting wisdom and knowledge. Consequently, proverbs are a powerful tool in representing, influencing or shaping the worldview of a group, often reflecting customs, practices, and prejudices of a group.

As already reviewed, we use Aristotle to establish an ethotic framework for contemporary Ghanaian social discourse but proceed to consider the ways that social media test and extend—and in some important ways subvert—the classical Aristotelian model, particularly when the speaker is a young Ghanaian woman. Some proverbs employed in Ghanaian popular discourse conform to the classical Aristotelian model, primarily when their speakers are culturally-situated as masculinist/misogynist and moralizing. Often proverbs can also have a subversive effect on masculinist authority when deployed by women, particularly by women in business and entertainment and when engaged in behaviors discountenanced by traditional masculinist authority. Hence, contemporary Ghanaian discourse inhabits a cultural-dialogic space "in between" the (conservative) traditional oral folkways and the (transgressive/progressive) "new media". It is, in sum, caught in transit between traditional and progressive cultural-discursive norms. In this regard, we may describe contemporary Ghanaian society as a liminal space where there is an obvious break from normative cultural patterns, and where new practices that question normative cultural practices have emerged but the old normative practices are not completely abandoned, (Victor Turner 1974; Joseph Jeyaraj 2004).

Here we consider ways that contemporary Ghanaian social media co-opts proverbial discourse within an agonistic or competitive mediated space that crosses gender, age, occupation, and class. We note that Ghanaian proverbs warrant a rhetorical/ethotic vocabulary of their own, independent of classical Aristotelian theory. While we see proverbs as a source of dominant/normative ideologies (including those on female sexual behavior), we also recognize social media as a platform for interactions among people of all ages, and it represents a social space where both dominant and emerging ideologies on female sexual behavior may be expressed, especially because the interactions on social media "are sometimes anonymous or pseudonymous" (Kozinets 2012, p. 39).

### **4. Proverbs as Ideology on Female Sexual Behavior**

Proverbs provide one snapshot into contemporary Ghanaian society. For instance, Kofi Agyekum (2000, 2005, 2012) analyzes proverbs as an aspect of Akan oral literature through mass media in contemporary times, most notably in the lyrics of contemporary Ghanaian music, aphorisms, and marriage proverbs. Similarly, Yankah (1986, 1989, 1999) discussed proverbs as part of the aesthetics of traditional communication in Ghana (1989) and as rhetoric in the context of the African judicial process (1986). Awuni's love letter to Reigns derives its authority from proverbs and other forms of rhetorical traditions, tales, and stories. Awuni references translated proverbs and attributes them to "the elders," who are believed to be custodians of Ghanaian cultural values. Indeed, Awuni's condemnation of Reigns's manner of dress (calling it "nudity") is based on what he describes as "what

our elders have said." For instance, part of his advice to Reigns requests her to speak to an elder; he writes:

And anytime you want to repeat what you recently said about your

nudity, kindly ask your father to tell you what our elders meant when they said,

"The disease that will kill a person first breaks sticks into their ears."

(Awuni 2017)

Following this, we identified other similar proverbs from Dzobo's work and from Appiah, Appiah, and Agyeman-Duah's collection that speak to ideologies on normative female sexual behavior that we articulate below. While we do not fully explore every meaning of each proverb, readers will be able to interpret them through their own cultural lens as well, which only enriches our discussion and our collective understanding of them. The following Ghanaian proverbs are well known and, we suspect, easily understood by a general audience: Proverbs a, d, f, h and k are from Dzobo (1975); Proverbs c, I, j and g are from Dzobo (2006) and Proverbs b and e are taken from Peggy Appiah, Anthony Appiah, and Ivor Agyeman-Duah (Appiah et al. 2007).


woman, a mother-in-law, to illustrate duplicity in a society where mothers never receive bride price or dowry; whether in patriarchal or matriarchal cultures, moneys and gifts related to marriage are paid to fathers and uncles in Ghanaian society. This proverb implies that mothers-in-law are mostly crooked people.


Through these proverbs, we agree with some Ghanaian scholars (e.g., Diabah and Amfo 2015), who have described Ghanaian traditional culture as patriarchal, male-biased, and enforcing gendered roles and spaces, where rigid, essentialist roles with regard to who/what men and women are or can be, and what women and men can/cannot or should/should not do exist. These concepts are illustrated in proverbs a–c above. Again, there appears to exist a certain expected appropriate sexual behavior for young people and Etego-Amengor (2014, p. 257) has argued that the concept of Ghanaian chastity "is about the virtuous woman; the woman who exudes the traditional concept of decorum, modesty, self-service and dignity in all spheres of life". This view is similar to the concepts in proverbs d–i which highlight the expected sexual behavior and emphasize moral values/character (of women), rather than physical beauty/sexual attractiveness. Consequently, if a woman emphasized her sexual attributes in any perceivable way, she might typically be described as immoral (violating an ethos of sexual behavior).

Thus, the features of ethos/philosophy on sexual behavior as demonstrated above show these Ghanaian proverbs may be similar to John Bender and David E. Wellbery's definition of classical rhetoric as "an art of positionality in address. Audience are characterized by status, age, temperament, education, and so forth. Speakers are impersonators who adapt themselves to occasions in order to gain and maintain position", and that "rhetorical speech marks and is marked by social hierarchy" (Bender and Wellbery 1990, p. 7). In this regard, we describe proverbial ethos on female sexuality as projecting age, male dominance, and male authority as normative. To be specific, men are the definers and women are largely the defined; that men create power (over women) through the use of language to assert power. Perhaps, this explains why Awuni, a male with authority (established/accomplished, award-winning journalist) grounds his authority in what the elders (who are typically men) have said in proverbs to advise Reigns, a young, powerless female (school drop-out/songstress) and even condemn her sexual presentation (scanty mode of dressing). Recall that both Awuni and some of his supporters who applauded his *letter to Ebony*, used proverbs, especially in condemning Reigns. Certainly, we conclude that proverbs are a source of dominant ideologies on ethos in contemporary Ghanaian society.

### **5. Ethos through Ghanaian Understanding and Beyond**

According to Kenneth Burke (1966), in *Language as Symbolic Action*, language may be used to "defeat reality" (p. 45). In other words, a speaker may use language to deflect their audience's attention toward or away from certain realities or ideologies. In what follows, we describe how Reigns, the young, female drop-out who is not traditionally regarded as an authority on normative female

sexual behavior uses language (discursive practice) in an attempt to defeat the reality of traditional Ghanaian ethos on female sexual behavior. We examine some social media discourses around her and the controversy she generated in order to infer how she created an identity and a voice that challenged normative Ghanaian ethos on female sexuality.

We begin with some discussion of her music. The lyrics of her songs became a flashpoint that openly critiqued Ghanaian traditions and cultural norms. For example, the lyrics of her song "Sponsor" exposed the justification and even glorification of the exploitation by young women of older men (for material gain) on one hand, and of young men (for sexual pleasure) on the other hand as shown in the excerpt below:

See I'av got myself a sponsor Anthing me i ask edey buy buy Even though he is older Another one who is younger When I ask for something eday cry cry *Mese papa yi a m'nya no yi de*ε *Humanities* **2020**, *9*, x FOR PEER REVIEW 8 of 15 Even though he is older Another one who is younger When I ask for something eday cry cry *Mese papa yi a m'nya no yi deε כ mame bibiaa* [the older man provides my material needs] *εnso edru anadwo a wobεhwε na aka me nkoaa* [but I am lonely at night] *εdaa כbεba me nkyεn me so ne mu asem a כka ne sε* [when I touch him on the day he visits me he retorts] Cool it for me slow down….. *Me sisi yε mi ya* [I have waist pains] Oh Lord have mercy mercy mercy These broke guys have lot of energy Inna me down town hot just like oven But when the morning comes me no have nothing A boyfriend who can't buy you food when you are hungry3 (https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Ebony/Sponsor) *mame bibiaa* [the older man provides my material needs] ε*nso edru anadwo a wob*ε*hw*ε *na aka me nkoaa* [but I am lonely at night] ε*daa Humanities* **2020**, *9*, x FOR PEER REVIEW 8 of 15 Even though he is older Another one who is younger When I ask for something eday cry cry *Mese papa yi a m'nya no yi deε כ mame bibiaa* [the older man provides my material needs] *εnso edru anadwo a wobεhwε na aka me nkoaa* [but I am lonely at night] *εdaa כbεba me nkyεn me so ne mu asem a כka ne sε* [when I touch him on the day he visits me he retorts] Cool it for me slow down….. *Me sisi yε mi ya* [I have waist pains] Oh Lord have mercy mercy mercy These broke guys have lot of energy Inna me down town hot just like oven But when the morning comes me no have nothing A boyfriend who can't buy you food when you are hungry3 *b*ε*ba me nky*ε*n me so ne mu asem a Humanities* **2020**, *9*, x FOR PEER REVIEW 8 of 15 Even though he is older Another one who is younger When I ask for something eday cry cry *Mese papa yi a m'nya no yi deε כ mame bibiaa* [the older man provides my material needs] *εnso edru anadwo a wobεhwε na aka me nkoaa* [but I am lonely at night] *εdaa כbεba me nkyεn me so ne mu asem a כka ne sε* [when I touch him on the day he visits me he retorts] Cool it for me slow down….. *Me sisi yε mi ya* [I have waist pains] Oh Lord have mercy mercy mercy These broke guys have lot of energy Inna me down town hot just like oven But when the morning comes me no have nothing A boyfriend who can't buy you food when you are hungry3 *ka ne s*ε [when I touch him on the day he visits me he retorts] Cool it for me slow down . . . .. *Me sisi y*ε *mi ya* [I have waist pains] Oh Lord have mercy mercy mercy These broke guys have lot of energy Inna me down town hot just like oven But when the morning comes me no have nothing A boyfriend who can't buy you food when you are hungry<sup>3</sup> (https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Ebony/Sponsor)

The lyrics in this song violate the spirit of proverbs d and g above. Contrary to traditional thinking, the song questions why a woman cannot keep two men at the same time, especially given the fact many men do keep two women at a time. Further, the lyrics of another of her songs, "Date Ur Fada [your father]," challenge the traditional Ghanaian ethos that permits promiscuity among men but not women by threatening (perhaps, proposing) to engage in an incestuous relationship (that is, date the father of her promiscuous lover), a traditional taboo in Ghana. Below are excerpts from Reigns's song "Date Ur Fada": (https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Ebony/Sponsor) The lyrics in this song violate the spirit of proverbs d and g above. Contrary to traditional thinking, the song questions why a woman cannot keep two men at the same time, especially given the fact many men do keep two women at a time. Further, the lyrics of another of her songs, "Date Ur Fada [your father]," challenge the traditional Ghanaian ethos that permits promiscuity among men but not women by threatening (perhaps, proposing) to engage in an incestuous relationship (that is, date the father of her promiscuous lover), a traditional taboo in Ghana. Below are excerpts from (https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Ebony/Sponsor) The lyrics in this song violate the spirit of proverbs d and g above. Contrary to traditional thinking, the song questions why a woman cannot keep two men at the same time, especially given the fact many men do keep two women at a time. Further, the lyrics of another of her songs, "Date Ur Fada [your father]," challenge the traditional Ghanaian ethos that permits promiscuity among men but not women by threatening (perhaps, proposing) to engage in an incestuous relationship (that is, date the father of her promiscuous lover), a traditional taboo in Ghana. Below are excerpts from The lyrics in this song violate the spirit of proverbs d and g above. Contrary to traditional thinking, the song questions why a woman cannot keep two men at the same time, especially given the fact many men do keep two women at a time. Further, the lyrics of another of her songs, "Date Ur Fada [your father]," challenge the traditional Ghanaian ethos that permits promiscuity among men but not women by threatening (perhaps, proposing) to engage in an incestuous relationship (that is, date the father of her promiscuous lover), a traditional taboo in Ghana. Below are excerpts from Reigns's song "Date Ur Fada":

If you break my heart i go date ur fada Bony pon dis Danny beatz The 90's badgyal trend Reigns's song "Date Ur Fada": If you break my heart i go date ur fada Reigns's song "Date Ur Fada": If you break my heart i go date ur fada Bony pon dis Danny beatz If you break my heart i go date ur fada Bony pon dis Danny beatz The 90's badgyal trend

See i heard them say, heard them say Boy you a player You dey score like Messi, play like Kaka Dribble like Wakaso You dey like Barcelona, Real Madrid Arsenal, Man U, Chelsea See i heard them say, heard them say You dey score like Messi, play like Kaka You dey like Barcelona, Real Madrid The 90's badgyal trend See i heard them say, heard them say Boy you a player You dey score like Messi, play like Kaka Dribble like Wakaso You dey like Barcelona, Real Madrid See i heard them say, heard them say Boy you a player You dey score like Messi, play like Kaka Dribble like Wakaso You dey like Barcelona, Real Madrid Arsenal, Man U, Chelsea

I go give you my heart, give you body

Arsenal, Man U, Chelsea

But if you break my heart

Do anything for you

I go give you my heart, give you body

Sacrifice my life to be your wife I'm gonna be there for you

Bakasi you know sey I get am o

Bobbie stand you know sey I own am o And no style dey wey I no sabi do am o

I'm gonna be there for you

But if you break my heart

Bakasi you know sey I get am o

Bobbie stand you know sey I own am o And no style dey wey I no sabi do am o

I go date ur fada You gonna be my son You go call me your mother

<sup>3</sup> Translations in brackets provided by the authors, who are L1 and L2 speakers of Akan, the main language

of the music.

Me I no like Versace

I go date ur fada You gonna be my son You go call me your mother

Bony pon dis Danny beatz

The 90's badgyal trend

Boy you a player

Dribble like Wakaso

Do anything for you

I go date ur fada You gonna be my son You go call me your mother

Me I no like Versace

of the music.

Arsenal, Man U, Chelsea

But if you break my heart

I go give you my heart, give you body

Sacrifice my life to be your wife I'm gonna be there for you

Bakasi you know sey I get am o

Bobbie stand you know sey I own am o And no style dey wey I no sabi do am o

Me I no like Versace

of the music.

<sup>3</sup> Translations in brackets provided by the authors, who are L1 and L2 speakers of Akan, the main language

<sup>3</sup> Translations in brackets provided by the authors, who are L1 and L2 speakers of Akan, the main language

Do anything for you Sacrifice my life to be your wife <sup>3</sup> Translations in brackets provided by the authors, who are L1 and L2 speakers of Akan, the main language of the music.

I go give you my heart, give you body Do anything for you Sacrifice my life to be your wife I'm gonna be there for you

But if you break my heart I go date ur fada You gonna be my son You go call me your mother

Bakasi you know sey I get am o Bobbie stand you know sey I own am o And no style dey wey I no sabi do am o Me I no like Versace And I no like Designer Me I no like Ferrari And I no like Bugatti

But if you break my heart I go date ur fada You gonna be my son You go call me your mother (https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Ebony/Date-Ur-Fada)

Before her death in February 2018, particularly in the months of November and December 2017, Reigns came under intense criticism in Ghana over both her mode of dressing and her lyrics. Both were perceived to be violations of normative female sexual behavior in Ghana (see proverbs i–k above). The criticisms came in various forms, ranging from friendly advice to downright insults and condemnation through several avenues including social media posts, open letters in online newspapers, and even to radio call-in programs. These criticisms came from people from all walks of life and across different sections of Ghanaian society, including men, women, gospel musicians, and journalists. These criticisms received interesting reactions from other members of the Ghanaian public. We present a few selections of some of these criticisms and reactions as they occurred in real time on social media and other media platforms, in order to infer what contemporary Ghanaian ethos on appropriate female sexual behavior appears to be.

On 7 August 2017, a female Afrobeat artiste, Feli Nuna, was reported on myjoyonline.com to have asserted that the lyrics of Reigns's song "Sponsor" were influencing young people negatively (MyjoyOnline.com 2018). Later in November 2017, Reigns was reported in the Ghanaian media to have dressed in such a way as to reveal portions of her private parts during a high-profile entertainment event. As soon as the news broke, the president of the Musicians Association of Ghana (MUSIGA), Bice Osei Kuffour (aka, Obour), gave a TV interview on Joy TV condemning Reigns's manner of dressing, describing it as "bad" and not conforming to the moral values of Ghana (myjoyonline.com, proverb b). Like the Awuni letter, many people on social media supported Obour's remarks and clearly pointed to societal expectations of conformity to a Ghanaian ethos by young women. This response contrasts a similar incident in which a young Ghanaian male musician, Wisa Greid, exposed his genitals during a concert. While many people saw Greid's behavior as inappropriate and he was arrested by the police, the general reaction of the public was that his behavior was a mere youthful exuberance (notably male). More importantly, his reputation was unscathed, perhaps even bolstered. In reaction to Obour's condemning comments, which were carried across social media, Reigns responded to the MUSIGA president in a Facebook post on November 29 2017:

Ebony reigns dressing is very bad and is not our culture, but 'chopping' of[f] musicians' money is very good and i think that is our culture.some gh musicians are dying of hunger and what is ur union doing about that mr president? do you really care? #hustle. (Reigns 2017)

Shortly thereafter, Reigns's post on Facebook which was also published peacefmonline.com (Peacefmonline.com 2017) on 30 November 2017, received over 4000 likes, 43 shares, and 223 comments. In countering Obour, the MUSIGA president, Reigns "spoke with the voice of a man," (proverb a). Traditional Ghanaian ethos does not allow younger people, in general, and particularly women and most especially younger women, to contradict or talk back to an older man or to an authoritative male figure. This is seen as disrespectful and, thus, a violation of traditional behavior codes. As expected, some "senior" musicians went on record to advise the songstress to apologize to the president of their association. For more context, Obour once released an award-winning song (Konkontibaa, tadpole) whose lyrics promoted the early sexualization of young girls by men. However, he was never expected to apologize to Ghanaian society, not even by female activists/feminists. In this testy exchange, however, many of Reigns's online followers referenced his song and questioned Obour's authority to judge her, calling him a hypocrite. Another fan of Reigns questioned Obour's credibility in these matters based on his own manner of dressing in the following Facebook post:


It was in the midst of this controversy that Awuni wrote the open love letter to advise and condemn Reigns at the same time. It is important to note that while Awuni condemned Reigns's manner of dressing and called it nudity and advised her to desist from it, he praised her talent and voice and urged her to concentrate on developing those aspects. In this regard, Awuni was speaking in the voice of the elders, that is, that Ebony, as a young woman, should express beauty in character and not sexual attractiveness. Still in the month of November 2017, an award-winning UK-based gospel musician, Sony Badu, endorsed Reigns's talent and tagged her critics as hypocrites in an online post. His post attracted 235 likes on Adomonline.com (Adomonline.com 2017) and 23 comments on ghanaweb.com (Ghana 2017): two popular social sites in Ghana. As usual, while some comments were affirming both Sony Badu and Reigns, others insulted both of them or questioned Sony Badu's Christian/moral values. Finally, in an article on 8 December 2017, BenjaminAkyena Brantuo, a broadcast journalist, described the Ebony controversy in Ghana as hypocritical/contradictory on the part of the many who condemn her behavior/morals. As he points out, "When the respectable people of our society want to relax with good music, laced with sexual lyrics, performed by a beautiful actress, scantily dressed, guess where they go—Ebony's shows!" (Akyena-Brantuo 2017). Moreover, Reigns received frequent invitations to perform at high-profile events and he concludes that "While it is convenient to disrespect and or condemn Ebony for her dressing, apparently, she does it for our sake" (Akyena-Brantuo 2017). The more pointed element to Benjamin's article exposes the hypocrisy in Ghanaian society. He details as more deserving of attention, the "nepotism and cronyism," the failures of the educational system, and various structures of corruption such as illegal mining and getting unqualified relatives into "grade A schools through the back door" (Akyena-Brantuo 2017). While he exposes these realities, he concludes with a (proverbial) Bible verse (Matthew 7.5): "You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."

It is obvious from the above discussion that traditional Ghanaian ethos on female sexual behavior is being challenged and re-fashioned in contemporary Ghana. While some online community members viewed Reigns's use of her sexuality negatively, others wrote that Reigns was young and ignorant. Others warned her of dire future consequences if she did not desist from her behavior. However, Reigns's supporters used many Christian references in their comments and called Reigns's critics hypocrites. They also argued that her detractors were guilty of doing worse things in secret and should

reflect on their own double standards. These exchanges suggest a powerful and meaningful evolution of Ghanaian culture and its redress and reconsideration of traditional thinking.

### **6. Conclusions: Ethos as Discursive Construction in Contemporary Ghana**

The evolution of a current Ghanaian ethos on female sexual behavior involves heteroglossic elements. Mikhail M. Bakhtin (1992, On Dialogism and Heteroglossia) defines heteroglossia as a form of verbal communication whose importance is seen in the fact that "it represents the co-existence of socio-ideological contradictions between the present and the past, between different socio-ideological groups" (p. 291). Applying this understanding to the social and online interactions and proverbs concerning female sexuality, we see the differing and emotive voices and viewpoints making themselves heard. Some of these voices represent dominant traditional, patriarchal normative ideologies (i.e., what the elders have said and the proverbs that have been passed down). Others, mostly young and liberal, subvert the dominant discourses of Ghanaian ethos on female sexual behavior in their support of Reigns's behavior. Indeed, Reigns projects her transgressive voice not only through her linguistic behavior (lyrics and responses to criticism) but also through her manner of dressing and her general way of life. While contemporary Ghanaian ethos is slowly evolving through these dialogic views in society, the latter voice is described by the former as "courting the rage of overzealous liberals and self-proclaimed feminists" (Awuni 2017).

From a feminist point of view, Ghanaian social media and, by extension, most of Ghanaian society, was reacting negatively to Reigns because of her perceived transgressions of Ghanaian traditional, cultural, and Christian moral codes concerning appropriate sexual behaviors for females (proverbs b, c, f, j, k, and l). Most importantly, these reactions occurred because she was a young female. Ghanaian traditional culture is patriarchal and directs Ghanaians into gendered roles and spaces. With modernization, education, and the assumption of authority, female power has grown exponentially in Ghana. Yet, it is still hard for many to accept public expressions of female sexuality and authority. In other words, traditional ideologies of female sexuality as revealed in proverbs and explained by Rosemary Etego-Amengor remain the dominant space. Nevertheless, there are emerging spaces, like that of Reigns. However, such spaces are viewed by many as unacceptable because they are created by young females who are not regarded traditionally as having authority. Indeed, Reigns fought for her differing/untraditional voice or stance in order to be heard. In other words, Reigns challenged and questioned the dominant voice on female sexuality in order to create autonomy for a young female voice. Further, Reigns's use of her body and voice is not only about forming a transgressive identity but also empowering other minority voices (e.g., young females) in a male-dominated culture. According to Bender and Wellbery (1990), what is happening in contemporary Ghanaian society is a common feature of many philosophical systems:

the cultural hegemony of [classical] rhetoric as a practice of discourse... is grounded in the social structures of the premodern world. Conceived in its broadest terms then, the demise of rhetoric coincides with that long and arduous historical process that is often termed modernization: the replacement of a symbolic-religious organization of social and cultural life by rationalized forms, the gradual shift from a stratificational differentiation of society to one that operates along functional axes. (p. 7)

The public's responses to Reigns represents a dialogism that is a part of the Ghanaian ethos today, as mentioned earlier. Other examples of dialogism in a similar vein involved an earlier incident in 2014 that occurred between an internationally known Ghanaian preacher and a young Ghanaian actress. The popular evangelical preacher Archbishop Duncan-Williams, in a sermon, declared that without marriage, a woman's achievements and contributions to society were useless. He further claimed that the ratio of women to men in the world was 7:1, and thus it was a privilege for a woman to find a man to marry her. He further admonished young women not to misbehave so that men would want to

marry them. This sermon reinforced the ideas of female submission and dependency on men and the importance of good character for females (proverbs a, b, and i).

An unmarried young actress, Ms. Lydia Forson, countered the archbishop's message by writing a sarcastic letter proposing marriage to the already married Archbishop on several news forums in hopes, as she stated, of getting married and having relevance in life. Her letter forced the Archbishop to deny that he was a chauvinist and to state that he did not mean to offend or disrespect Ghanaian women in his sermon (Graphic.com.gh 2014) In this incident, Ms. Forson 'spoke with the voice of a man' (proverb a).

Normally, on the one hand, a man of the Archbishop's standing in Ghana would not be expected to respond to a young woman's rebuke or backtrack on his statements because a young woman was displeased by them. On the other hand, Ms. Forson, a young woman, would not be expected to push back so publicly against a male preacher of assumed high moral standing. This issue elicited hundreds of responses from the Ghanaian public with some supporting Ms. Forson and others, the Archbishop.

A more recent illustration of dialogism in contemporary Ghanaian society occurred in 2018 when a social media influencer and actress, Moesha Boduong, caused a stir in Ghana by telling CNN anchor, Christane Amanpour, that most Ghanaian young women have sex with older/rich men in order to make ends meet (myjoyonline.com). Once again, on the one hand, she was condemned by a huge section of Ghanaians including government officials and women's organizations, and was forced to publicly apologize to the nation for her 'disgraceful comments' which violated Ghanaian traditional ethos on female sexual behavior, as encoded in proverbs i, j, and k. With her comments, she had "washed her dirty linen in public". On the other hand, there was a huge social media support for Ms. Boduong, where it was argued that there was nothing wrong with her views. Thus, the nature of dialogism in Ghanaian society may be best captured by the following quotation from Bakhtin, (Speech Genres, Bakhtin 1984): "There is neither a first nor a last word and there are no limits to the dialogic context" (p. 170). In contemporary Ghanaian society, patriarchal, misogynist norms, traditional and religious philosophies regarding female sexuality no longer (singularly) define the sexual behavior of many young women. Their actions and candidness (which violate traditional rules discouraging explicitly sexual language, proverb l) and their unashamed admissions concerning their use of their sexualities clearly show that young women like Reigns are not afraid to cross moral/taboo lines in traditional/social narratives (violations of proverbs f, h, j, and k). In fact, many Ghanaian women are challenging the proverbial ethos that seeks to reinforce normative notions of women's subservience and inferiority to men (proverbs a–c). These women employ intellectual, rather than the sexual pursuits which Reigns alludes to in her lyrics. Even though these two groups of women work on opposing sides, their actions contribute toward changing the traditional Ghanaian ethos. Thus, they generate new forms that respond to a climate mediated by technological and gender-sensitive influences.

The public condemnation of Reigns' desire to celebrate her sexuality in public and on social media seems contradictory when one considers Ghanaian traditional expectations that women satisfy their husbands sexually any time they demand it. Some possible influences that have also challenged the dominant Ghanaian ethos on female sexuality and emboldened young women like Reigns to be sexually daring, may be found on social media, entertainment, and film industries. Outside of Ghana, American reality stars such as Kim Kardashian and hip hop stars such as Nikki Minaj and Cardi B (whose sexiness contribute significantly to their success), push some young Ghanaian female artistes into modeling these sexually explicit behaviors. The sexualized images of the American stars send messages to young women that to be seen as beautiful, attention-worthy, and successful, they must utilize their sexuality. In this regard, the use of proverbs, which have been described as enthymemes in Aristotelian rhetoric, to encode these cultural norms suggests that the Ghanaian culture/society is not inherently authoritarian but open to dialogism. Thus, the study of proverbs may be important in creating a dialogical theory that incorporates voices from contexts that are less studied or represented in the literature.

Contemporary Ghanaian ethos on female sexual behavior reveals itself through heteroglossia by multiple discursive practices, including traditional proverbs and modern communicative avenues (e.g., social media). Social media has given (young) women like Reigns massive online platforms. With these, they not only challenge dominant ideologies on female sexuality in contemporary Ghanaian society, but also showcase their sexualities and lifestyles as alternatives to the dominant ones. These underrepresented voices embody the polyphony that is shaping new forms of ethos through dress, character, address, and morality in Ghana. The heteroglossic elements of the traditional, the transgressive, gender and class dimensions, all contribute to evolving ethotic forms co-existing in an uneasy mix in contemporary Ghanaian society. As has been observed by Chris Abotchie (2006) and Gladys N. Ansah (2017), theGhanaian society seems to be still emerging (but not weaned) from traditional beliefs and practices in many aspects of life.

From the above discussion, it is evident that this paper contributes to feminist rhetorical scholarship by including the voices of Reigns and by implication, other (young) women into mainstream (traditional) Ghanaian discourse formerly dominated by male voices. The paper demonstrates how young females (powerless by Ghanaian cultural precepts) exert power in society by exhibiting feminist attributes of daring, crossing traditional gender lines and challenging the submissive and dependent roles assigned by their society/culture. The paper illustrates how Ebony Reigns influences a significant segment of young Ghanaians by using her sexuality, behavior, and words as persuasive tools to affect a paradigm shift and contribute to the shaping of a contemporary Ghanaian ethos on female sexuality.

This paper's focus also expands our awareness of female voices and shows the intersections of Ghanaian feminist rhetoric with tradition, culture, and social change. This is critical to a deeper understanding of Ghanaian culture, both past and present.

In addition, this work treats proverbs and ethos from an angle that is different from what past researchers have done with the subject. Our study goes beyond the description of proverbs and their portrayal of women to show their (proverbs) role in not only shaping traditional Ghanaian ethos but also how gender disrupts proverbial influence and creates new ethos forms. This study is also significant in its presentation of a female rhetor as a subject and as a power player in contemporary Ghanaian ethos formation. Unlike other studies in this area of Ghanaian proverbs and ethos, this study employs computer-mediated responses in real time from numerous responders on social media platforms to gauge public reactions towards the female subject/rhetor—Reigns. Thus, the study presents the continuously evolving shift in Ghanaian ethos, setting it apart from other studies in this area.

Finally, the findings of this study contribute to the contemporary debate about cultural identity as well as critical social discourse, and the role rhetorical concepts play in advancing such debate.

**Author Contributions:** Both authors contributed in equal measure with regard to the conceptualization, writing, reviewing, and all other aspects of the article. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Acknowledgments:** We are grateful to the co-editors of this Special Issue, Craig A. Meyer and James S. Baumlin, for their support and inviting us to contribute to this volume.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

### **References**


Agyekum, Kofi. 2000. Aspects of akan oral literature in the media. *Research Review* 16: 1–18.

Agyekum, Kofi. 2005. An Akan oral artist-the use of proverbs in the lyrics of Kwabena Konadu. *Institute of African Studies Research Review* 21: 1–17. [CrossRef]


Robinson, Fred Norris. 1945. Irish proverbs and Irish national character. *Modern Philology* 43: 1–10. [CrossRef]


© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

## *Article* **Ethos in Early Chinese Rhetoric: The Case of "Heaven"**

**Yong-Kang Wei**

**Citation:** Wei, Yong-Kang. 2021. Ethos in Early Chinese Rhetoric: The Case of "Heaven". *Humanities* 10: 7. https://doi.org/10.3390/h10010007

Received: 2 December 2020 Accepted: 27 December 2020 Published: 29 December 2020

affiliations.

4.0/).

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional clai-ms in published maps and institutio-nal

**Copyright:** © 2010 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/

Department of Writing and Language Studies, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Brownsville, TX 78520, USA; yongkang.wei@utrgv.edu

**Abstract:** Though applicable in many Western historical-cultural settings, the Aristotelian model of ethos is not universal. As early Chinese rhetoric shows in the example of *cheng-yan* or "ethos of sincereness," inspiring trust does not necessarily involve a process of character-based self-projection. In the Aristotelian model, the rhetor stands as a signifier of ethos, with an ideology of individualism privileged, whereas Chinese rhetoric assumes a collectivist model in which ethos belongs, not to an individual or a text, but rather to culture and cultural tradition. This essay will be concentrating on the concept of Heaven, central to the cultural and institutional systems of early Chinese society, in an attempt to explore collective ethos as a function of cultural heritage. Heaven, it shall be argued, plays a key role in the creation of Chinese ethos. This essay will also contrast the logocentrism of Western rhetorical tradition with the ethnocentrism of Chinese tradition. The significance of Heaven in its role as a defining attribute of Chinese ethos is reflective of a unique cultural heritage shaped by a collective human desire in seeking a consciousness of unity with the universe. Just as there are historical, cultural, and philosophical reasons behind logocentrism in the West, so the ethnocentric turn of Chinese rhetoric should be appreciated in light of a cultural tradition that carries its own historical complexities and philosophical intricacies.

**Keywords:** ethos; Chinese ethos; rhetoric; early Chinese rhetoric; Heaven; cultural heritage

### **1. Introduction**

Two species of ethos seem to predominate in this special issue of *Histories of Ethos*: one is rhetorical, aimed at swaying an audience; the other is sociological, aimed at attaining or asserting one's "positionality" (Baumlin and Meyer 2018) in the human social world. In Burkean terms, this second species shifts the emphasis from persuasion to "identification,"<sup>1</sup> be it within "scientific ethos" (Merton 1973), "feminist ethos" (Palmer-Mehta 2016), or "cyborg ethos" (DeLashmutt 2011), to name a few. Indeed, most of the essays of this collection focus on the sociological ethos, as seen in "American working-class ethos" (Thelin 2019), "hip-hop ethos" (Harrison and Arthur 2019), "Islamic ethos" (Oweidat 2019), and "disability ethos" (Stones and Meyer 2020). For instance, Stones and Meyer are promoting positionality for people with disabilities when they argue for "a disability ethos of invention" that "creates spaces wherein people with disabilities can express individuality, promote understanding, and transform culture" (Stones and Meyer 2020, p. 2).

In this essay, I would like to strike a balance by focusing more on rhetorical ethos, through a discussion of "heavenly ethos" in classical Chinese rhetoric. But, before furthering my discussion, I wish to point out that the existence of two kinds of ethos marks a postmodern shift in contemporary scholarship and discourse practices: that is, from ethos as the individual, personal appeal of a rhetor to ethos as a collective consciousness embedded, evolved, and promoted within a society and its corresponding institutions, including its discourse systems. I would name the latter a "collective ethos," in the sense that it is projected beyond the selfhood of a rhetor and into realms of the "communal"

<sup>1</sup> Halloran (1975) summarizes Burkean rhetoric well: "The key term for a modern rhetoric is not persuasion but identification" (p. 626).

(Harris 1993, p. 125). This "collective" and "communal" ethos diverges from the model as described by Aristotle in his *Rhetoric*.

Aristotle writes of ethos: "Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided" (Aristotle 1990, p. 153). In this way, Aristotle "emphasized the role a speaker's character plays in persuasion" (Baumlin 1994, p. xii). Further, this ethotic persuasion is "achieved by what the speaker says, not by what people think of his character before he begins to speak" (Aristotle 1990, p. 153). That is to say, the rhetor must construct his material (his artistic proofs) to "make his own character look right" (Aristotle 1990, p. 160). To put it bluntly, an Aristotelian ethos can be "faked," since the textually-produced image functions independently of a rhetor's true character (assuming that "true character" exists).

Though Aristotle's ethos can be taken as "quintessentially a linguistic phenomenon" (Baumlin 1994, p. xxiii) made up of artistic proofs, it never gives up on its own categories of self and selfhood: ethos must be equated with the character of a rhetor in the form of self-representation in order for its persuasive function to be materialized—even though representation as such amounts to an artistic fabrication. The Aristotelian notion of ethos, it would seem, has trapped Western theorists for good, for they can never, in the truest sense of the phrase, "think outside the box" of self—even when that self is reduced to a social "mask" or a linguistic "I" (Baumlin and Meyer 2018, p. 5). This situation is summed up well by Baumlin and Meyer: "it seems that any adequate 'map' or model of ethos will include *a version of self* and of its relation to culture and language" (Baumlin and Meyer 2018, p. 4). But the question is: Is it possible to theorize ethos without having self or selfhood attached to it? Or, does rhetorical ethos have to be character-based? Is a self-less and character-less rhetoric conceivable? We might get an answer from early Chinese rhetoric, which will be discussed a little later.

A rhetor's character, writes Aristotle, "may almost be called the most effective *means* of persuasion he possesses" (Aristotle 1990, p. 154; emphasis added). Three qualities, he adds, "inspire confidence in the orator's own character": namely, "good sense, good moral character, and good will" (Aristotle 1990, p. 161). But bear in mind that, no matter what, character is just a means to an end in his scheme of ethos. The end is to "inspire *trust* in his audience" (Aristotle 1990, p. 161; emphasis added), to render the audience better disposed to what the rhetor wants it to hear or react to. But another question may be raised: do rhetors have to rely on textually-constructed character in order to build up trust? Or, are there any alternative paths? Early Chinese rhetoric may have an answer in its emphasis on sincerity (*xin*, *cheng*) and sincere speech (*cheng-yan*).

Kennedy suggests that the "moral rightness of the message" in Confucian and Daoist texts could constitute Chinese ethos (Kennedy 1998, p. 151), a point seemingly echoed in Lu's statement on Mencius' *cheng-yan* (i.e., sincere speech) (Lu 1998, p. 175).<sup>2</sup> Lu strikes a Mencian tone when asserting that *cheng-yan* also refers to "an innate moral quality out of which sincere and honest speech naturally and powerfully arise in our efforts to influence one another" (Lu 1998, p. 175). Her further claim that *cheng-yan* is "similar to Aristotle's notion of ethos" (Lu 1998, p. 175) seems a stretch, however, since *cheng-yan* is expressive of one's "innate moral quality," whereas Aristotelian ethos is a mode of persuasion out of artistic proof (and subject, thus, to manipulation). Nevertheless, "*cheng-yan* could be the closest shot in bridging the gap between Chinese and Western ethos," in that it has the effect of inspiring "trust" in Confucian rhetoric (Wei 2017, p. 25). And its rhetorical power is best illustrated by Mencius himself: "It never happens that genuine sincerity cannot move others; on the other hand, nobody would be moved if sincerity was not in place."<sup>3</sup>

<sup>2</sup> Mencius (390–305 B.C.) has been widely considered the second most important figure in the founding of Confucianism.

<sup>3</sup> My translation, based on the original Chinese version in *The Complete Four Books and Five Classics with Annotations*, edited by Han (1995). See "Li Lou (a)," *Mencius* (p. 261).

Mencius' *cheng-yan* reinforces a Confucian doctrine on rhetoric: that is, *xiu ci li qi cheng*, which can be roughly translated as "to cultivate words for the purpose of building trust" or, simply, as "rhetoric oriented towards sincereness."<sup>4</sup> Trust, or sincereness, or truthfulness, is a moral principle in Confucianism: "the aim of the noble man is to be *cheng*" (Goldin 1999, p. 104). Thus, *cheng-yan* can be viewed as "both the means to an end and the end itself of communication" (Lu 1998, p. 175). It differs from Aristotle's ethos in this respect, the latter being treated as a means only. Concomitantly, *cheng-yan* is reminiscent of Burkean "identification," which is seen as a strategy as well as the goal of rhetoric (Burke 1950).

In Confucian rhetoric, *cheng-yan* "focuses more on the appeal of language (i.e., *yan*) than on the very person who speaks or writes it, contrasting the emphasis placed on the appeal of the writer or speaker as a person in Western rhetoric" (Wei 2017, p. 26). This accords with a cultural tradition that downplays the role of an individual for the purpose of preserving social harmony; more significantly, it tells of a philosophical awareness of the structuring power of language in shaping human behavior (Hansen 1983; Graham 1989): hence Confucius' promotion of "rectification of names."<sup>5</sup> It may not seem too much to say that Confucius, as well as his followers such as Mencius, brought "poststructuralist" insights into ancient China, given their recognition that "language, as a social practice, mediates one's conduct" (Wei 2017, p. 26). This might explain, in a fundamental way, why "sincere speech," rather than "sincere personality," is emphasized in the Confucian ethos of *cheng-yan*.

Needless to say, human agency plays a lesser role (if any) in the Confucian model of ethos; in this respect, it contrasts with the Western model, the latter predicated on the premise of "the moral and, ultimately, theological inseparability of the speaker-agent from the speech-act" (Baumlin 1994, p. xiii). If a discourse is agent-less, then where do we locate a rhetor's own ethos? Admittedly, early Confucianism does speak of moral agency, but it is not so much of selfhood in an individual as of "human nature" in general terms (Van Norden 2000). According to Seok, an "active form of moral agency" can still be observed in Confucian discourse, but it is not based on "self-enclosed independency" but rather on "relational and interactive interdependency of communal agency" (Seok 2017). In short, human agency, in the form of asserting an autonomous individual self, is out of the picture in the Confucian tradition, which values and puts to use the performative function of language while at the same time advocating self-cultivation, self-restraint, and self-effacement as virtues that a *jun-zi* (i.e., a nobleman or gentleman in the spiritual sense) must possess.

My point is that the Aristotelian model of ethos, projected through the "identification of a speaker with/in his or her speech" (Baumlin 1994, p. xi), is not universal in application. For, if ethos is to function rhetorically for the purpose of gaining trust (as more broadly defined), then there is a way of formulating ethos without such identification: this is seen in the example of *cheng-yan* or "ethos of sincereness" in early Chinese rhetoric, where a rhetor's personal character matters little in delivering the rhetorical power of trust to move his audience. I have no intention to declare that a Chinese ethos is better. It is just different. The famous "agonistic Greeks vs. irenic Chinese" contrast put forth by Lloyd (1996) may sound a little dramatic, but it captures the difference in sociological footpaths that the ancient Greeks and Chinese had set for themselves: the former privileged personal gain or advancement, whereas the latter valued social harmony, thereby discouraging such gain or advancement. When translated into rhetorical practices, these differing worldviews underlie two vastly different traditions. The Athenian-based rhetoric takes an aggressive, "argue-to-win" approach, bringing into play a personalized speech whose owner (ultimately winner) must be identified: hence, its ethos is character driven, based on self-projection. To the contrary, the Daoist or Confucian rhetoric upholds the

<sup>4</sup> My translation, based on the original Chinese version in *The Complete Four Books and Five Classics with Annotations*, edited by Han (1995). See "Wen-Yan Zhuan," *Zhou Yi* (p. 439).

<sup>5</sup> Briefly put, this promotion reflects a realization that correctness in language could lead to correctness in human behavior.

virtue of conformity to the Way (or Dao), the ultimate source of harmony of all beings, a virtue that often leads to a rhetorical practice that "eschews persuasion and argumentation" (Lyon 2009, p. 178). In line with the doctrine of harmony, rhetoric is also depersonalized, a Chinese feature that renders baseless the identification of a rhetor with his text, hence the kind of ethos projected as self-less and character-less—all the more so if a "poststructuralist" view of language, shared among early Chinese thinkers, is taken into account for its conditioning power over humans.

That ethos, in the sense of inspiring trust, can be projected differently, from the perspective of early Chinese rhetoric, calls for a need "to *see* the history of rhetoric as culturally situated and embedded" (Lipson and Binkley 2004, p. 3; emphasis original). The purpose of this essay is indeed to highlight that need. In what follows, I will be further discussing the notion of ethos in early Chinese rhetoric by looking closely at a deeply revered concept in Chinese culture, *tian* (Heaven), which carries an ethotic function similar to the *skeptron,* as presented by Baumlin and Meyer following Bourdieu (Baumlin and Meyer 2018, pp. 7–8). Like the *skeptron*, *tian* can be used to "claim the cultural authority, expertise, trust, and means to speak and to be heard" (Baumlin 2020, p. 1). Through *tian* or Heaven, Chinese ethos is, in essence, an invocation of one's cultural heritage, with which rhetors identify themselves and, in doing so, create their ethotic appeals or appeals of their speeches/texts. I would call ethos as such a "collective ethos," in the sense that it has little to do with the individual qualities of a rhetor but much to do with a collective consciousness that defines, and is also defined by, Chinese culture in ancient times, as exemplified by Heaven.

### **2. Collective Ethos**

It would be hard to imagine an ancient Chinese rhetor (*shui-ke*) standing above a crowd delivering an epideictic speech or engaging in a public debate, not because democracy failed to prevail in society, but because such a rhetorical behavior was completely out of character with a cultural tradition that discourages individuality but holds high instead the spirit of humility, collectivism, and adherence to social rituals (*li*). And there is one more reason, perhaps more important: that is, rhetoric in early China was hardly seen as an individual enterprise. Rather, it was practiced, socially, in the form of "collective workmanship" (Wei 2017), as typically seen in the production of the Chinese classics, such as Laozi's *Dao De Jing* (*Tao-Te Ching*) and Confucius' *Analects*. <sup>6</sup> These were created as collections of short essays, paragraphs, and axiomatic sentences written and rewritten by generations of disciples of Laozi and Confucius over a span of decades or even centuries. While the texts bear the name of Laozi or Confucius as a token of respect from disciples (Lewis 1999, p. 53), the historical master may have never contributed a single written word to the collection. What is significant about these textual collections is that their authorship appears to break away from all of the "self-structure" (Alcorn 1994, p. 3) associated with a Western ethos: character, personality, person(a), voice, image, and, above all, the self. None of these traits matters in the production of old Chinese texts.

"A theory of ethos," states Alcorn, "needs to be grounded in a relatively clear, but also relatively complex, understanding of the self" (Alcorn 1994, p. 4), but does this theory also apply to those Chinese classics, and, more broadly, to Chinese rhetoric in general? The question is self-explanatory, given the collective workmanship just mentioned. I would not say there is no such thing as ethos in the Chinese classics. To the contrary, the name of historical Laozi or Confucius carries ethotic weight and can be used effectively for the purpose of holding the *skeptron*; but that moniker does not necessarily denote the "inseparability of the speaker-agent from the speech-act" (Baumlin 1994, p. xiii), as commonly practiced in the Western tradition, let alone an ethos built upon and out of an individual rhetor's personal character.

<sup>6</sup> Laozi (570?–480? B.C.) is an early Chinese thinker and the founder of Daoism.

As a result of collective workmanship, early Chinese rhetoricians produced a body of classical texts unmatched by other cultures or civilizations of ancient times (Kennedy 1998). However, many of these texts are just repeated products (though with some variations), something I "discovered" years ago when doing research in a Beijing library. I would restrain from using the term "plagiarism" to describe the phenomenon; rather, it would be more appropriate to see it as a practice of "patterned rhetoric" (Schaberg 2001), where rhetors would strive to speak/write like one another so as to conform to the "order" and "terms" of "received language" (Schaberg 2001, p. 30). One cannot help noticing, from the patterned rhetoric, that "originality was discounted" (Oliver 1995, p. 361) and, further, that "eloquence was viewed as conforming oneself to discourse rituals that had been collectively valued and culturally sanctioned" (Wei 2017, p. 18). This would contrast sharply with the Western tradition, where "rhetoric is seen as an individual endeavor, identified with self-presentation, or even self-sell" (Wei 2017, p. 18). The Western sense of rhetoric, "as an avenue for the individual to achieve control," warrants "originality and individuality," notes Matalene (1985, p. 795).

This "patterned" rhetorical practice reflects, to a large extent, a cultural practice at large of relying on "received wisdom" to find solutions to the problems or issues of the current age. There was a deep-rooted belief among the early Chinese that the past was better than the present and that the "golden age" of the remote past—when the state was run as "a perfect embodiment of *dao*" (Liu and You 2009, p. 156) by sage-kings such as Yao and Shun7—ought to be emulated by all rulers through the restoration of *li* (ritualized systems).<sup>8</sup> This prominent feature of Chinese thinking is referred to as "the use of the historical appeal" (Cua 2000, p. 39) or, probably more exact, the appeal of "building on the wisdom of ancestors" (Kline 2000, p. 164). Kline explains: "Before the emergence of the ancient sages the world was in chaos," but "fortunately for Chinese civilization there arose sages who were able to create ritual forms and build lasting institutions that provided the framework for an ordered society and individual cultivation" (Kline 2000, p. 155). Hence the appeal to antiquity. A famous example would be Confucius himself, who "adopted history," as Liu and You have observed, "as an archetypical *topos*" in his rhetoric, which can be re-presented like this: "The past informs and guides the present" (Liu and You 2009, p. 158).

The historical appeal was practiced ubiquitously in early Chinese rhetoric. The reason is simple: it paves the path to the *skeptron*. Whoever speaks in the name of the ancestors can wave the *skeptron* of ethos, but this would—again—throw into question the Aristotelian notion of ethos as an individual appeal on the part of a rhetor, just as the abovementioned collective workmanship and patterned rhetoric would throw into question the agonistic notion of Athenian rhetoric as an individual enterprise. The reason is also simple: a Chinese ethos, in the form of historical appeal, has little to do with the personal character of a rhetor, upon which an Aristotelian ethos is sustained; rather, it is a cultural construct woven out of the collective consciousness of early Chinese society, a consciousness that holds fast to an inveterate belief in history and in the "wisdom" of legendary sage-kings, who are said to have possessed direct inspiration from the "divine" (Schwartz 1989, p. 26). I am using the term "cultural construct" to refer to a simple fact: such a belief cannot be attributed to any single figure or any particular period in Chinese history, but it has been passed on through generations as part of a cultural heritage. A rhetor's job, so to speak, is to build a connection with that heritage in order to appropriate the ethotic power that comes with it.

So, we might say that a Chinese ethos comes from without, as it is constructed out of a cultural heritage, as opposed to a Western ethos, which comes from within, being grounded in a rhetor's self or selfhood. This without/within contrast may explain, in a nutshell, how Chinese ethos "works" as a collective ethos versus its Western counterpart, which "works" as an individualistic ethos. Again, I would not say that a collective ethos is superior to an

<sup>7</sup> Legendary figures in Chinese history.

<sup>8</sup> In Confucianism, *li*, a ritualized system of institutions, plays a key part in keeping harmony in place.

individualistic ethos. It is just different. It reflects the uniqueness of Chinese rhetoric in its own development, and, more broadly, it reflects the cultural values and social institutions surrounding such development in ancient China—a point that will be discussed through the remainder of the essay, in the case of Heaven.

### **3. Heaven and the Dao**

Any Westerner who has an extended exposure to classical Chinese texts would be struck by the "Chinese obsession" with Heaven (*tian*) and Heaven-related notions, such as the Mandate of Heaven (*tian-ming*), the Will of Heaven, the Way or Dao of Heaven, etc. In many ways, Heaven was to the Chinese what God was to Christians in the West (Goldin 1999).<sup>9</sup> However, despite its "omnipresence," the concept of Heaven did not appear as clearly articulated in those texts as the Judeo-Christian God was in the *Bible*. This is because a broad range of associations were carried with "Heaven": Lord-on-High, a cosmic moral order in the sense of the Dao, the "mediator" between humans and the Dao (Liu and You 2009), a physical object in the sense of the sky opposite to the earth, a metaphysical entity representing *Yang* (and complementary to Earth as *Yin*), nature, human nature, and fate or destiny, just to name a few. Ironically, the conceptual vagueness of Heaven turned out to be a rhetorical "advantage" to some rhetors (*shui-ke*), who would (mis)use Heaven to argue the unarguable and explain the unexplainable.

The multivalent meanings of Heaven may indicate a conceptual evolution that it had undergone in early Chinese thought. For example, according to Shun (1997, p. 15), in the early Zhou period (1066–771 B.C.), Heaven "was thought to be responsible for various natural phenomena, to have control over human affairs, and to have emotions and the capacity to act."<sup>10</sup> In addition, it represented "a source of political authority" for the Zhou kings, hence the Mandate of Heaven (Shun 1997, p. 15). But in the later Zhou, Heaven came to be known as a force for "rewarding the good and punishing the evil" and for "the preservation and destruction of states," a change that implies that the king was not the sole beneficiary of Heavenly authority (Shun 1997, p.16). During this period, Heaven was also seen as "the source of norms of conduct," so that a moral basis could be established for "the observance of *li* [rituals; rites]" (Shun 1997, p. 16).

Whatever differences in view of Heaven, the general consensus among scholars seems to be: for Confucius, the term referred to "a supreme, personal deity," but after him it was more and more associated with "a superior moral force or nature" (Ching 1997, p. 80). In the latter sense, Heaven came close to the concept of the Dao, the ultimate principle of governance in the universe for all beings and non-beings. In many classical texts, Heaven and the Dao were used interchangeably to represent the order of the divine and/or the natural, believed to be above or beyond that of the human. But very often Heaven would serve as an attendant notion of the Dao to suggest that the visible or the nameable (Heaven) is contingent upon the invisible or the nameless (Dao). For example, in his essay "On Heaven", Xunzi argued that "Heaven is governed by a constant Way (*tian you chang dao*)."<sup>11</sup> In *Dao De Jing*, Laozi claimed that "the nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth" (Laozi 1972, chp. 1), implying that "Heaven and earth are not the ultimate" (Schwartz 1989, p. 196).

In early Chinese thought, the term Dao was also used to refer to a variety of subjects, covering a range of references greater than Heaven. Philosophically, especially in the school of Daoism, it was meant as a metaphysical concept to represent the ultimate, which by definition remains "completely beyond human perception" (Kohn 1992, p. 46). This

<sup>9</sup> According to Ivanhoe and Norden (2001, p. 360), Heaven in pre-Qin China was "*not* primarily thought of as a place," and was "not connected with any explicit views about an afterlife," which may serve as a point of distinction from the Western concept of Heaven.

<sup>10</sup> Zhou refers to the Zhou Dynasty in Chinese history, roughly from 1066 to 221 B.C. The later Zhou included the "Spring-Autumn" (722–481 B.C.) and Warring-States (403–221 B.C.) periods, which historians often liken to the Axial period in the West.

<sup>11</sup> My translation, based on the original Chinese version in *Selected Readings from Famous Chinese Philosophers*. Vol. 1, edited by Shi (1988, p. 208). Xunzi was an ancient Chinese thinker (about 313–238 B.C.), arguably the third most important figure in the founding of Confucianism.

may add to the explanation why Heaven could be ambiguous, especially when used in association with the nameless.

### **4. The Dao, Truth, and Western Logocentrism**

In this section and the next, I will explore the positions of truth and logic in ancient Chinese philosophy (and related epistemological issues), in hopes of "setting the stage" for further discussion of Heaven and its centrality to ethos in classical Chinese texts. In this passage from *Dao De Jing,* Laozi describes the Dao:

Look, it cannot be seen—it is beyond form. Listen, it cannot be heard—it is beyond sound. Grasp, it cannot be held—it is intangible. These three are indefinable; Therefore they are joined in one. From above it is not bright; From below it is not dark: An unbroken thread beyond description. It returns to nothingness. The form of the formless, The image of the imageless, It is called indefinable and beyond imagination. Stand before it and there is no beginning. Follow it and there is no end. (Laozi 1972, chp. 14)

This passage could be easily dismissed as "elusive" by someone with a "positivist" attitude, but it addresses several philosophical issues widely discussed in Western postmodernism. It also registers an extraordinary similarity to the Vacuum Genesis theory of modern physics, which declares that the whole universe started from "absolute nothingness."<sup>12</sup> There is probably no need to elaborate on the "eternal emptiness" of the world from the point of view of Daoism, but we can sense a relevance in Laozi's passage to the questions of truth and language.

First, the Dao, or the ultimate reality, is considered beyond reach in early Chinese thought as it cannot be "seen," "heard," "held" or even "imagined." If we compare it with the transcendental truth framed in Platonic tradition, we may see an immediate difference. In *Gorgias*, Plato's Socrates asserts that truth, like "the great power of geometrical equality among both gods and men" (Plato 1990, p. 100), is accessible to humans if a rigorous reasoning, modeled after his dialectic, is conducted. Since Plato, Western philosophy has been driven by what Derrida (Derrida 1976, p. 11) calls "logocentrism," phrased after the Greek term *logos*. But what has been celebrated in the logocentric tradition is indeed Plato's idealistic notion that absolute truth can somehow be ascertained by humans.

To say that the absolute truth is beyond reach is one thing, but to say such truth does not exist in early Chinese thought is another. Indeed, the Dao is just another word for the absolute. However, unlike their Greek counterparts so possessed with rational demonstration in their quest for the absolute (supposedly independent of human intervention), ancient Chinese thinkers—at least the vast majority of them—appeared to take a "let-it-go" attitude towards it, so that they could redirect their attention to the worldly, promoting their moral or political agendas by utilizing what had already been accepted as true, such as the Dao. A. C. Graham, a noted Western Sinologist, sums it up this way: for Confucius and Laozi, "problem-solving without useful purpose is a pointless frivolity" (Graham 1989, p. 7). Graham's statement seems to reaffirm an earlier observation by Johnston, who

<sup>12</sup> See, for example, "The Creation of the Universe," PBS, 28 October 2003.

notes that the approach to truth in early Chinese philosophy is based on "a pragmatic, [...] not a logical or empirical justification" (Johnston 1976, p. 4). This assessment by Western scholars is also echoed by some Chinese. For instance, Liu and You hold that Confucius was "concerned chiefly with human affairs in his teaching, distancing himself from natural and metaphysical matters" (Liu and You 2009, p. 159). Logically, we may draw two implications from the aforementioned "let-it-go" attitude: first, that the pragmatic approach to truth would yield more space for rhetorical maneuvers (*shui* in Chinese); and second, that such an approach would blend rhetoric (in the realm of the acceptable or conventional) and philosophy (in the realm of the absolute or truthful) into one instead of separating them. This is seen in the example of *Dao De Jing,* which can be read as "a work of rhetoric" and also as a treatise on philosophy (Kowal 1995, p. 364).<sup>13</sup>

Second, Laozi's message can also be interpreted as a recognition that the ultimate truth, if any, cannot be conveyed through language, because it is "indefinable" and "beyond description." Again, we can feel the difference between Laozi and Plato. The latter believes that "the truth behind appearances can be delineated" by a language that is "more analytical, objective, and dialectical" (Bizzell and Herzberg 1990, p. 56). Put simply, for Laozi, the truth is ineffable, but for Plato it can be effable if the right language is in place. A careful reader can see that Laozi poses a paradox by speaking the unspeakable in *Dao De Jing*. On the other hand, Plato also poses a paradox, though in a different way. For, the infinite truth would stop being infinite the moment it turned into a linguistic entity in the hands of mundane humans. In other words, are humans really capable of using the finite (language) to describe the infinite?

### **5. Logic and Its Position in Chinese Rhetoric**

Plato is known for his hostility towards rhetoric, but he never abandons rhetoric; rather, he advocates "good rhetoric," cleansed of emotive and irrational elements that he fears can induce "flattery" (Plato 1990, p. 96). Clearly, Plato sees logic, or logos (as Derrida would call it), as the defining element of "good rhetoric." We know that Aristotle has made a vigorous defense of rhetoric, declaring it "the counterpart of Dialectic" (Aristotle 1990, p. 151), but, like his teacher, he too privileges logic, as seen in his statement about enthymemes, which he claims "are the substance of rhetorical persuasion." In many ways, Aristotle's *Rhetoric* can be read as "a popular logic" (Cooper 1960, p. xx). That Plato and Aristotle and, by extension, the logocentricism of Western philosophy (and rhetoric) privilege logic seems self-explanatory, as logic operates, conveniently, on the premise of truth: whoever knows how to apply logic grasps, in Derrida's words, the "signifier" and "signification of *truth*" (Derrida 1976, p. 10; emphasis original).

Logic, as a special language formulation, was not completely alien to early Chinese philosophers and rhetoricians; rather, it just did not enjoy the status it had with Plato, Aristotle, and other Greeks. As Schaberg demonstrates in his analysis of passages in the *Zuo Zhuan*, "the syllogism was among the techniques of proof available to early Chinese speakers and writers" (Schaberg 2001, p. 41).<sup>14</sup> He uses the following as an example: "one who is the object of awe, concern, modeling, and imitation has *weiyi* [dignity and deportment]; King Wen<sup>15</sup> was the object of awe, concern, modeling, and imitation; therefore King Wen had *weiyi*" (Schaberg 2001, p. 41).

What appears to distinguish the ancient Chinese from the ancient Greeks is that the former generally did not share the same degree of "rigor" with the latter, for two reasons. One reason is that Chinese writers or speakers were pragmatic: if everything is

<sup>13</sup> Western rhetoric seeks the probable (that is, things approximating truth) for its rational appeal; Chinese pragmatism, however, would look for what is acceptable (*ke*), morally and socially, with truth out of the picture. The former is epistemological in approach; the latter is largely cultural (and therefore conventional).

<sup>14</sup> *Zuo Zhuan* is one of the classics in the Confucian canon.

<sup>15</sup> Founder of the Zhou Dynasty (1171–1122 B.C), widely regarded as a sage-king in Chinese history.

already made clear, then the conclusion can be "left implicit."<sup>16</sup> The other reason is that the Chinese preferred to have "logical demonstration" (*apodeixis*) and "showy display" (*epideixis*) "intertwined" in texts (Schaberg 2001, p. 41), a point that appears to confirm what was suggested earlier: the pragmatic approach to truth would blend the rhetorical and the philosophical into one. Overall, however, ancient Chinese writers/speakers would pay much more attention to the former, as rhetorical "elegance [was] paramount, in classical texts such as the *Zou Zhuan* and *Guo Yu*<sup>17</sup> (Schaberg 2001, p. 30).

Apart from sporadic pieces of "logical" writing collected in the aforementioned Confucian classics, pre-Qin China also saw a brief episode of "rationalism," as represented by Mozi (480–420 B.C.) and his school of thought, Mohism. While Mozi and his followers did not formalize logic in the Aristotelian fashion, their "logical sophistication" (Graham 1989, p. 137) has been widely recognized by both Chinese and Western theorists. The early Mohists were primarily concerned over "problems of morals and government," but the Neo-Mohists extended their inquiry into such areas as "logical puzzles, geometry, optics, mechanics, economics" (Graham 1989, p. 137). Mohism has, however, been traditionally viewed as an anti-Confucian, anti-establishment movement. Despite a brief period of thriving in pre-Qin China, its status in the development of Chinese philosophy has remained at best "secondary" (Graham 1989, p. 7), if not marginal.

Due to a renewed interest in Mohism and other schools of rationalism (e.g., School of Naming) in recent decades, many contemporary Chinese scholars feel the "urge" to challenge the "bias" of Western scholars who hold that "Chinese rhetoric is not interested in logic" (Lu 1998, p. 31). For example, Zhi-Tie Dong draws a comparison between Aristotle's logic and Chinese "naming" and "arguing" (largely based on Mohism) and concludes that the latter, despite its lesser degree of formalism, represents "the study of logic in ancient China" (Dong 1998, pp. 4, 190). Xing Lu, for another example, argues that Western theorists have been wrong in using their own rhetorical terminology to judge Chinese rhetoric, for they 'are "unfamiliar" with terms in Chinese "associated with the classical Greek meaning of *logos*" (Lu 1998, p. 37).

The arguments of these Chinese scholars may have merit, but elevating Chinese rhetoric to the "logical" status may suggest, on their part, a misunderstanding of the cultural and intellectual circumstances in which that rhetoric has been practiced. The quest for truth has been part and parcel of the logocentrism of Western philosophy, but this has never been the case within the Chinese tradition. Because the mainstream philosophers in ancient China, who were also rhetoricians, were "pragmatic" about truth, they were generally not particularly interested in using logic—both as the "signifier" and "signification of truth" by Western standards—to demonstrate the absolute. Yes, logic or logos did have its presence in classical Chinese texts, but it was rarely considered the substance of rhetoric due to Chinese rhetors' "faith" in the "incontrovertibility" of "received definitions and texts" (Schaberg 2001, p. 42). In other words, for those rhetors, received wisdom was more important, and perhaps more useful, than something that had to be rigorously proven or demonstrated. Based on my readings of classical texts, even a rationalist such as Mozi would frequently have to resort to "Heaven" to hammer out his argument. So, I would say that the assessment by some of the Western theorists, such as Oliver, that "Chinese rhetoric is not interested in logic" is basically "*ke*" (acceptable), even though it may sound a bit belittling to those who are attempting to "rationalize" classical Chinese rhetoric.<sup>18</sup> Once more, this does not mean that "the Chinese do not speak or write in ways that presume the

<sup>16</sup> For a Chinese, something such as "all swans are white, and this is a swan" is enough; the conclusion, "therefore this swan is white," is self-evident and can be left unsaid. As an added note, Aristotle prefers to leave the premises implicit because of the concern that "a tight logical argument is not effective in rhetoric" (Kennedy 1980, p. 71), seemingly contrasting the Chinese preference for an implicit conclusion.

<sup>17</sup> Also one of the classics in Confucian canon.

<sup>18</sup> The word "*ke*" (acceptable) was characteristically used in classical Chinese texts when a judgment was called for, in contrast to the frequent use of "true" or "valid" in similar situations in Western texts. This may also serve as an example of how ancient Chinese in general were not particularly interested in strict logical demonstrations. For practical reasons, what is "acceptable" would have a wider range of applications than what is "true" or "valid" based on logical demonstration.

facticity of assertions. It is only that there is little interest in raising the issue of facticity or literalness to the level of speculation and theory" (Hall and Ames 1998, p. 135).

### **6. Ethos as a Cultural Construct**

The seemingly unshakable "faith" in "received definitions and texts" (Schaberg 2001, p. 42) may have constituted a rhetorical strategy in itself. Because it was "never open to question," such a faith, Schaberg contends, "encouraged a looseness of form in proofs" (Schaberg 2001, p. 42). For pragmatic reasons, an argument using Heaven to "bluff" others would be easier to make than one relying on a rigid process of rational demonstration, which could well turn out to be a linguistic "drab," given the cultural penchant for rhetorical elegance. I might add that faith in the past, in the form of the historical appeal (as discussed earlier), is still widely observed in today's China. The practice of "repeating set phrases and maxims, following patterns, and imitating texts" (Matalene 1985, p. 804) is especially true in documents produced by the government offices and speeches made by government officials.

Aside from being pragmatic, the emphasis on received wisdom can also be seen as a conscious effort on the part of rhetors to utilize what had already been culturally accepted or established in the past to construct appeals to their own contemporary audiences—a point that I made earlier when speaking of the collective nature of Chinese ethos as a cultural heritage. The variables of such wisdom, such as the Dao, *Yin-Yang*, Heaven, and Confucianism, are all cultural formulations belonging to an early Chinese tradition. This would further explain why Chinese ethos is essentially a cultural, and therefore a collective, construct. As Kennedy observes, the "tradition of the ancestors who continue to watch the living" (Kennedy 1998, p. 151) plays an important role in creating Chinese ethos. This confirms the significance of the cultural in shaping how the Chinese present their ethos (through the ancestral lineage, for example). The remainder of this section will look at the early Chinese rhetorical tradition and its ethotic uses of Heaven as the ultimate source of authority.

For obvious reasons, whoever succeeded in appropriating the power of Heaven or placing himself under the "blessings" of Heaven would conveniently have the *skeptron* (ethos or source of ethos) in his hands to do what might otherwise be thought of as morally incomprehensible: for example, usurping the throne or conquering another kingdom. That is why every founder of a dynasty in Chinese history would invariably claim to inherit *tian-ming* (the Mandate of Heaven) for "the establishment of new regimes" (Lu 1998, p. 50), and kings or emperors would never hesitate to claim the title of *tian-zi* (the Son of Heaven) to ensure their authority as "the ultimate rulers of human affairs" (Lu 1998, p. 55). *Shi Jing* (*Book of Poetry*) contains numerous lines describing how King Wen, founder of the Zhou, had been granted a "command" (*ling*) from Heaven to overthrow the Shang and establish his own dynasty. <sup>19</sup> This is seen, for example, in the stanza of Da Ming:

The Mandate came from Heaven

Commanding this King Wen

To rename the kingdom as Zhou and establish its capital in Haojing

And to marry an heiress from the state of Shen.

She later bore King Wu,

The elder son [of King Wen] who continued the course [of the farther].

Blessed by Heaven, he [King Wu] carried on the Mandate,

Coordinating military attacks against the Great Shang.<sup>20</sup>

<sup>19</sup> The Shang Dynasty (around 1600–1066 B.C.). King Zhou, the last ruler of the Shang, is historically perceived as personally responsible for the demise of the dynasty because of his "wicked" rule. In *Shi Jing* and other early classics, he often serves to exemplify how a bad ruler is doomed by the Will of Heaven.

<sup>20</sup> My translation, based on the original Chinese version in *The Complete Four Books and Five Classics with Annotations*, edited by Han (1995). See "Da Ya," *Shi Jing* (p. 753).

*Shang Shu* (*Book of Documents*), among other classics, contains similar passages of how King Wu used the Mandate of Heaven to "spin" his political ethos—as seen, for example, in a "motivational speech" delivered to his generals and soldiers:

Heaven always shows its mercy to the people, and the ruler must obey the Will of Heaven. Jie of the Xia disobeyed Heaven above and therefore caused grave calamities all over on Earth.<sup>21</sup> That is why Heaven granted its Mandate to Cheng Tang,<sup>22</sup> to terminate the Dynasty of Xia. Today, the crimes of the king [Zhou] far exceed those committed by Jie. He persecutes the innocent and sends them into exile; he punishes and butchers his ministers who try to voice an honest opinion. He claims to have the Mandate of Heaven, yet dares to say that to revere Heaven is useless, that sacrificial ceremonies produce nothing good, and that his despotic practices won't hurt society. He is thus not far away from his own demise, as shown by the example of Jie. That is why Heaven confers the turn on me to rule the country. Plus, the dream I dreamed accords with the signs revealed through divination: They both tell good fortunes ahead, predicting an inevitable victory over the Shang. It is true that he has followers in millions, but they are shallow and ignorant. It is true that I have only ten ministers, but they are highly capable, knowing fully well how to govern the country and having a strong determination of working together for me. Surrounding oneself with crowds of cronies is nothing compared with leading a few men defined by virtue.

My people have witnessed what Heaven has witnessed [i.e., the ills of the day]; my people have heard what Heaven has condemned. If the people are complaining [of the social ills], I cannot stand aside; I have the sole responsibility to react. Now, I will lead my troops to charge forward.<sup>23</sup>

It is not necessary to perform a lengthy rhetorical analysis to point out the complexity of modes of appeals that King Wu applied and to show their relevance to the historical, cultural context in which the audience was addressed; it is important, nonetheless, to know that the passage quoted above from *Shang Shu* displays a high level of rhetorical technique long before the time of Confucius.<sup>24</sup> For instance, logic—especially in the Aristotelian category of "historical example" (Bizzell and Herzberg 1990, p. 147)—was applied to show that the Shang Dynasty would be doomed because of its despotic king, Zhou. The use of "example" could be summarized thus: King Jie disobeyed Heaven, hence the destruction of his dynasty. Now King Zhou is disobeying Heaven, his dynasty is approaching an end, too. There is little doubt that King Wu was using this "example" to legitimize his military attacks against the Shang as well as to advise his listeners that victory would be on his side.

However, we may also sense a subjugation of logos to ethos in the speech, given that the use of logic is dependent on the Will of Heaven—the basis of King Wu's ethos or, in Schwartz's words, "the ultimate source of the king's authority" (Schwartz 1989, p. 29). In fact, the whole argument would collapse if his ethos could not be sustained by the invocation of Heaven. For example, if Heaven did not exist, or if Heaven did not punish Jie (but rather Jie caused his own failure), then it would be useless for King Wu to present his ethos as the inheritor of a heavenly mandate (as in "Heaven confers the turn on me to rule"); this would in turn render "invalid" the application of a "logical" example that links Jie's fall to the prospect of Zhou's fall. (At least, there is no way to tell that Heaven chooses King Wu to execute its mandate.) But what appears ludicrous to a modern mind made perfect sense to King Wu and his audience, because the king's claim "to a special

<sup>21</sup> Jie, the last king of the Xia Dynasty, established around 2100 B.C. and conquered by the Shang around 1600 B.C. Historically, Jie, together with Zhou (earlier mentioned), is an embodiment of despotism. But unlike Zhou, the existence of Jie is not positively supported by historical evidence.

<sup>22</sup> Founder of the Shang, one of the legendary sage-kings in Chinese history.

<sup>23</sup> My translation, based on the original Chinese version in *The Complete Four Books and Five Classics with Annotations*, edited by Han (1995). See "Tai Shi (middle section), Book of the Zhou," *Shang Shu* (p. 1434).

<sup>24</sup> *Shang Shu* is historically classified as a pre-Confucius classic, though Confucius and his disciples may have played a role in its editing or even revising.

relation to Heaven" had been quite established in early Chinese thought for both "political" and "religious" reasons (Schwartz 1989, p. 43). In this sense, we might say that King Wu's ethos—in the name of the Mandate of Heaven—is a cultural construct of his time.

Schwartz and Ching, among others, have traced the permeance of Heaven in Chinese culture and its association with kingship in Chinese thought to the practice of shamanism in early stages of Chinese civilization. "The emergence of Ti [Heaven]" with its supreme power, speculates Schwartz, "may be associated with the theological meditations of shamans and other religious specialists who were in the royal entourage" (Schwartz 1989, p. 30).<sup>25</sup> In that "motivational speech" quoted above, King Wu's accusation that King Zhou did not revere Heaven may be seen as a recognition of Heaven's "ultimate sovereignty" (Schwartz 1989, p. 30) over all humans under Heaven, including the king. The mention of "sacrificial ceremonies" and "divination" by King Wu is suggestive of the practices of a shamanistic or religious nature in the early stages of Chinese civilization—practices that were used to reveal the power of the divine and to confirm "the king's claim to a monopoly of access to Ti" (Schwartz 1989, p. 30).

In *Mysticism and Kingship in China*, Ching shows that Chinese kings of the early ages were often "shamanic figures" themselves (Ching 1997, p. xiii).<sup>26</sup> For obvious reasons, those "shamanic kings," as well as "their heirs," "fabricated the tales of divine ancestry" to create the "mystical" role of kingship as "mediator between Heaven and Earth" (Ching 1997, pp. xii–iii). The legends of "sage-kings," who have "semi-divine attributes and the ability to maintain communication with the divine" (Ching 1997, p. 67), were indeed the invention of "later times"—possibly by Confucius, Mencius, and other pre-Qin thinkers who created the "myth" of sage-kings "for the sake of having real rulers emulate such mythical figures" (Ching 1997, p. xii). Confucians and the like may have invented the "sage-king" myth for the purpose of promoting their own moral or political agendas; but in doing so, they were also, wittingly or unwittingly, institutionalizing the office of kingship, together with its "heavenly" authority, just as those shamanic kings in the earlier period had used sacrificial ceremonies, divination, ancestral worship, and other ritualistic practices to institutionalize their rule over all under Heaven. In a way, this may explain why Confucianism was later "declared the official creed of the nation" by the court of the Han (in the second century B.C.), and Confucian classics "became the principal study, if not the sole, of all scholars and statesmen" in post-Qin China (De Bary et al. 1960, p. 19). But perhaps we are witnessing something even more significant here: the institutionalizing (Confucianism) finally turns into the institutionalized.

Though Ching does not use the word "ethos" to describe the authority of the king's "mandate," the following excerpt is quite telling in terms of how ethos was created for the king and how it was institutionalized for its own sustention:

... the charisma associated with shamanic ecstasy created the aura for the office of kingship, giving it a sacred, even a priestly character. But this charisma was eventually institutionalised and routinised, by a line of men who no longer possessed the gifts for summoning the spirits and deities. To support their power, however, they frequently resorted to the suggestion of charisma and of divine favour. They fabricated tales of divine or semi-divine origins; they consulted with the deities and spirits through divination, sacrifices, and other rituals. Such examples abounded in the rest of Chinese history. (Ching 1997, p. xii)

It will probably not change the semantics of "charisma," "aura," or "divine favour" if we substitute them here with the rhetorical term "ethos." But what is more revealing is the fact that the power of early Chinese kingship clearly depends on the creation or fabrication of ethos or, in Ching's words, of "charisma," "aura," "a sacred and priestly character," etc.

<sup>25</sup> *Ti*, also *Di* or *Shang-Di* in Chinese (i.e., Lord on High), was the god worshipped by people of the Shang Dynasty. It was replaced by Heaven in the Zhou Dynasty, but with the meaning remaining the same.

<sup>26</sup> For example, the author cites a study by the Japanese scholar, Kato Joken, as saying that King Wen and his son, King Wu, were both "shamans" (p. 17).

The association of ethos with "power" helps explain why it (i.e., ethos) was eventually "institutionalised and routinised," but we may push the argument further: the reason ethos is institutionalized is precisely because it partakes in the process of institutionalizing kingship and its power. Hence the conclusion that ethos and power, or the institutionalizing and the institutionalized, imply each other and are intertwined.

Perhaps we can push the argument even further: if logos is the "signifier" and "signification" of truth in the Western tradition of "logocentrism," then ethos is certainly the "signifier" and "signification" of power in the Chinese tradition of what I would have to call "ethocentrism."<sup>27</sup> The notion of ethocentrism, I believe, should explain, in the fundamental way, why ethos has taken center stage in the development of Chinese, especially classical Chinese, rhetoric. (With this ethocentrism in mind, Westerners may better appreciate why the notion of face, which is also sort of ethos, has carried such a massive weight in the life and thought of the Chinese.)

### **7. Ethos as an Institutionalized Discourse Formation**

Because of the cruciality of shamanic ethos (or charisma) in sustaining the power of kingship, the creation of such ethos (which, in postmodernist jargon, we might say is a discourse practice or a function of discourse practice) was well incorporated into the institutions of the early Chinese dynasties. For example, the Shang Dynasty set up the offices of *Duo-Bu* and *Zhan* specially to take charge of divination, and the *wu* (shaman) at the time was the official bureaucrat responsible for mediating between gods or spirits and humans (Guo 1976, p. 208). In the Zhou Dynasty, the *shamanic* bureaucracy became even more complex and more powerful,<sup>28</sup> given their status as ranked second only to the king. In fact most of the six highest-ranking offices, such as *Tai-Zhu* (Grand Invocator, in charge of sacrificial ceremonies), *Tai-Bu* (Grand Diviner), and *Tai-Zong* (Grand Genealogist, in charge of recording royal lineage), were directly responsible for religious or shamanic practices (Guo 1976, p. 265). The bureaucratic system of the Shang or the Zhou went, of course, beyond the periphery of shamanism, but we could see that the system was quite dedicated to mystifying (and, in doing so, to sustaining) the authority or power of kingship—which it achieved by suggestion of divine or heavenly charisma, aura, etc., in connection with the state-run, institutionalized apparatus of signification (such as divination and sacrificial ceremonies).<sup>29</sup> And the remark made by King Wu, in a speech quoted earlier, that "the dream I dreamed accords with the signs revealed through divination," can thus be taken as a strategy of ethos signifying his relation to Heaven and, as such, implying his Heavenbestowed power as well.

The "bizarre machinery"—as Foucault (1972, p. 135) would call it—involved in the process of signifying the ethos and therefore the power of early Chinese kingship is a good example of Foucault's thesis in *The Archaeology of Knowledge*: namely, that discourses are institutionalized formations (as in the case of heavenly ethos in China) "made possible by a group of relations [...] established between institutions, economical and social processes, behavioural patterns, systems of norms, techniques, types of classification, modes of characterization" (Foucault 1972, pp. 44–45). He goes on to suggest that the power of institutions, etc., cannot escape the "totality" of discourse (Foucault 1972, p. 55) because, after all, discourses are "practices that systematically form the object of which they speak" (Foucault 1972, p. 49). I do not wish to dwell on Foucault's discourse theory, but it

<sup>27</sup> By ethos as "signifier" of power, I mean that ethos has the function of signifying the power, say, of Chinese kingship; by ethos as "signification" of power, I mean such power is also implied in the process of the signification, for example, in the case of institutionalization. And I believe Derrida is suggesting the same—truth is signified by logos and at the same time is implied by logos. Or, I might put it this way: because of truth, that is why we have logos as signifier; because of logos as signification, that is why we have truth. Likewise, because of power, the Chinese king has ethos to signify it; because of ethos as signification, that is why the Chinese king has power!

<sup>28</sup> Ching believes that "religious fervor had greatly diminished" during the Zhou times (8), but I doubt it happened right away in the beginning of the Zhou. Since the Zhou covered a span of over 800 years, it is more likely (and even certain) that religious or shamanic practices played a lesser role in the political system in the later periods of the dynasty.

<sup>29</sup> As Schwartz points out, the king is "in some sense the 'high priest' of the worship of *Ti* [Heaven]" (p. 35).

is important to point out the obvious: that is, the mutually-defining relationship that Foucault describes between the institutionalized (i.e., discourse) and the institutionalizing (i.e., the authorizing institutions) is applicable to the "ethocentric" system of signification in the early ages of Chinese civilization, where ethos and power were mutually implying each other.<sup>30</sup>

So far, I have explained the central position of ethos in the development of early Chinese rhetoric by focusing on its intertwinement with divine power in early shamanic or religious practices—practices that often served to link the authority of kingship to that of Ti or Heaven. This point, as I have argued, helps explain the centrality of Heaven to Chinese ethos. Shamanism in early Chinese culture ought not to be dismissed as "utter nonsense."<sup>31</sup> It is more important to see its practice as a way of signification reflective "of the needs or desires of society and institutions and of available methods [...] of coming to know something," to quote Bizzell and Herzberg (Bizzell and Herzberg 1990, p. 1127). The unique historicity of the early shamanic or religious practices, of the methods of knowing and signifying characteristic of such practices, and, finally, of the association of ethos with power intimated with such practices and methods, ought to lead us to conclude that Chinese ethos, as a discourse formation, is fundamentally a function of a cultural heritage rather than a creation of a personal image making (as ethos, again, is typically perceived in Western rhetorical tradition).

### **8. A Philosophical Paradigm**

The fact that Heaven has played such a crucial role in creating Chinese ethos may prompt one to speculate whether or not the rampant (ab)use of Heaven in classical texts might have something to do with a human desire to appropriate Heaven to "boost" the ethos of the writers behind those texts. While the king may control access to Heaven, it is fair game for anybody else to say that he has the *zhi* (knowing) of how Heaven operates: for example, in terms of punishing evil or bringing down good to those who have diligently obeyed *tian-ming*, or the Mandate of Heaven. (In many cases, the king would need such claims to support his own authority.) As Dong Zhong-Shu (179?–104? B.C.), the leading Confucian scholar of the Han Dynasty,<sup>32</sup> once said: "[To know] is to predict accurately. [...] The person who knows can see fortune and misfortune a long way off, and can anticipate benefit and harm" (Ching 1997, p. 5).<sup>33</sup> From that statement, we can infer that the *zhi* in ancient Chinese society implied some sort of knowing about Heaven (allowing one to "see fortune and misfortune a long way off" or "anticipate benefit and harm") that was not monopolized by the king. In the *Analects*, Confucius is presented as someone who knows the Dao of Heaven, being blessed by "a special relationship with Heaven" (Ching 1997, p. 79), which I think can be taken as a rhetorical move on the part of his followers to add to the appeal of the Great Master. Confucius claims that he is the one who understands "the Mandate of Heaven" and lashes out at "the petty person" for failing to appreciate the Mandate (Ivanhoe and Norden 2001, p. 43, 50). But, again, we may interpret this as a strategy of ethos, used to legitimize his moral mission to restore the *li* of the early Zhou times, which the historical Confucius believed was "the Golden Age of humankind" (Ivanhoe and Norden 2001, p. 1).

<sup>30</sup> The fact that the power of kingship is implied by a system of signification suggests that the system can sometimes override the power of the king. For example, according to Legge (1963), *Yi-Jing* (the *Book of Changes*, used as a divination manual) has intimations that "only defensive war, or war waged by the rightful authority to put down rebellion or lawlessness, is right," that "the younger men [. . .] would cause evil if allowed to share [power] with the oldest son," etc., (*The I Ching*, p. 24), suggesting that the king has to follow what has been unveiled through divination, or signification. Similarly, Ching (1997) points out that the kingship system, which includes the system of signification, "became a factor that restrained a ruler's arbitrary exercise of authority, and sometimes functioned as an ultimate control over state power itself" (p. 34).

<sup>31</sup> The fact that so many Chinese and Western scholars are still fascinated by *Yi-Jing*, which was written starting in the twelfth century B.C. as a divination manual, is quite telling about the shamanic wisdom.

<sup>32</sup> The Han was the first post-Qin dynasty in Chinese history, lasting from 206 B.C. to 220 A.D.

<sup>33</sup> Dong is credited as the most important figure in Chinese history for establishing Confucianism as the official creed of the nation.

But perhaps a more "logical" explanation regarding the "high-frequency" occurrence of Heaven in classical Chinese texts, one seemingly supported by documentary evidence, is a philosophical longing among the ancient Chinese for "seeking a higher consciousness of oneness with the universe" (Ching 1997, p xiii)—which may be rephrased as "maintaining harmony with nature," "striving for unity between man and nature, and between man and the Dao," etc. The idea is that humankind is part of nature or the universe, and therefore, like anything else, is governed by Heaven as a "guiding Providence" (De Bary et al. 1960, p. 17). This sort of idealism, believed to form a philosophical paradigm in early Chinese thought (Ching 1997, pp. 99–131), underpins almost all the schools of philosophy in pre-Qin China, particularly Daoism and Confucianism.

For Daoism, "Heaven's net casts wide," with nothing to slip through "its meshes" (*Dao De Jing*, chp. 73). It advocates "caring for others and serving heaven" (chp. 59) and "realiz[ing] one's true nature" by leading a life of "simplicity," "cast[ing] off selfishness," and "temper[ing] desire" (chp. 19). Its ideal of *wu-wei* or doing-nothing (chp. 2) is sometimes seen by Westerners as a "nihilistic" manifestation, but actually it carries a political message for rulers in, for example, advising them against using a heavy hand in governing (chp. 58). Morally speaking, *wu-wei* cautions people not to be obsessed with material gains, for the "Tao [Dao] of heaven is to take from those who have too much and give to those who do not have enough" (chp. 77). The nihilistic overtone probably comes from the notion of "non-striving" as embedded in *wu-wei*; but, as T. Merton (1965, p. 24) explains, Daoism actually emphasizes conforming one's action to the "divine and spontaneous mode [...] of action" of the Dao, which remains the "source of all good." So, philosophically, we may say that the ideal of *wu-wei*, and Daoism at large, has formulated "an expression of the continuum between the human being as the microcosm of the universe as macrocosm" (Ching 1997, p. xi).

"The Dao of Heaven" stands at the core of Confucius' call for the return of *li* and for moral rectitude.<sup>34</sup> For the Great Master, the consummate ritual system (*li*), established by the Zhou founders, King Wen, King Wu, and the Duke of Zhou35, has carried within it "a set of sacred practices" (Ivanhoe and Norden 2001, p. 1) embodying the Dao of Heaven. Therefore, his teachings on *li* can be regarded as an attempt to "lead his fallen world back to the Dao, 'Way,' of Heaven" (Ivanhoe and Norden 2001, p. 2). Once Confucius claimed, "though my studies are lowly, they penetrate the sublime on high. Perhaps after all I am known—by Heaven" (De Bary et al. 1960, p. 22), thus linking his teachings to the order of the divine. At another time he uttered, "If I have done anything contrary to the Way, may Heaven reject me! May Heaven reject me!" (Ivanhoe and Norden 2001, p. 18), implying that the Dao of Heaven is the ultimate guiding principle for all human actions. But then what exactly is the Dao of Heaven for Confucius? An excerpt from the *Analects* gives us a clue:

Confucius said: "I wish I did not have to speak at all." Tzu Kung [his student] said: "But if you did not speak, Sir, what we disciples pass on to others?" Confucius said: "Look at Heaven there. Does it speak? The four seasons run their course and all things are produced. Does Heaven speak?" (De Bary et al. 1960, p. 30)

The Great Master seems to pose a paradox for himself by suggesting that true knowledge is not to be taught or learned but rather comes directly from Heaven, a point that rings quite similar to Socrates' "soul knowledge."<sup>36</sup> For, if this were true, his sacred mission of

<sup>34</sup> The word *dao* literally means "path" or "way" in Chinese. It is used metaphorically to refer to some sort of transcendent governing force of the universe in Chinese philosophy. "The Dao of Heaven" (*tian-dao*), which occurs in the *Analects* (Section 5), could have two connotations: The one is that Heaven itself is governed by the Dao; the other is that Heaven is representative of the Dao. Either way, we can see that Heaven serves as an attendant notion of the Dao, pointing to some kind of absolute truth beyond.

<sup>35</sup> The brother of King Wu (1043–1036 B.C.). After King Wu died, he served as the prince regent, resisting the advice of many to usurp the throne, hence widely regarded as a paragon of virtue by later generations. Historically, he is more significant for his role in establishing and perfecting the rituals and institutions of the Zhou Dynasty, the model for *li* to Confucians.

<sup>36</sup> See, for example, the *Meno* in *The Collected Dialogues of* Plato (1961), where Socrates says that "the truth about reality is always in our soul" (p. 371) and that "there is no such thing as teaching, only recollection" (p. 364).

transmitting the wisdom about the Dao of Heaven would certainly lose its practicable basis. That aside, we may sense that Heaven as referred to by Confucius is indeed "a natural order" (De Bary et al. 1960, p. 17), which does not speak but yet reveals itself through the cycle of four seasons, the growth of ten thousand things, etc.<sup>37</sup> For Confucius, such an order carries norms (as in the "season-comes-season-goes" cycle), or messages of the Dao, which he believes must translate into "a moral order" (De Bary et al. 1960, p. 17) in society. So, the idea of *li* is really about the norm of human behavior, as seen, for example, in his motto: "Rulers must act like rulers, subjects like subjects, fathers like fathers, and sons like sons."

In a word, Confucius' teachings, like Laozi's, fit into the philosophical paradigm described earlier of ancient Chinese thought: the oneness of Heaven and humanity (*tian-ren he-yi*). But Daoism and Confucianism have different leanings: Daoism, in general, is more interested in transcending humanity to the Dao of Heaven, whereas Confucianism is more intent on applying the Dao of Heaven to this world, focusing on what is right for human mortals.<sup>38</sup> The "Dao," as Schwartz points out, has thus become "Confucius' inclusive name for the all-embracing normative human order" (Schwartz 1989, p. 63).

### **9. Oneness of Ethos and Logos**

If we take a closer look at Heaven in Daoism or Confucianism and Heaven in earlier shamanic practices as the ultimate source of ethos for the king, we may realize that these two "Heavens" actually refer to two different concepts: in the former case, Heaven represents an impersonal, natural process, more or less in the category of truth (e.g., transcendent truth), whereas in the latter, Heaven is a personal god or a supreme deity, more or less in the category of power (e.g., the power of awarding the good and punishing the evil). Thus, the word "Heaven" has symbolized what Westerners would see as an antithesis: an "active conscious will" and the "source of universal order" (Schwartz 1989, p. 51) or, to put it in philosophical terms, "the category of ontological creativity and the categories of the primary cosmology" (Neville 1991, p. 72).

Many hypotheses have been proposed to solve this puzzle, ranging from the dismissal that the Chinese mind does not know the distinction between theism and non-theism to the admiration that it is more "inclusive" and "balanced," and therefore able to reconcile what appears irreconcilable to the Westerner (e.g., Neville 1991, pp. 48–74). I have no intention to get into the debate, but I do wish to point out the obvious, something I have mentioned earlier: namely, that Heaven had gone through a conceptual evolution in early Chinese thought—for example, from Lord-on-High worshiped by the Shang people to the "source of norms of conduct" revered by Confucians. Undoubtedly, such an evolution has caused a semantic "problem" for Heaven as a concept—its ambiguity, one of those "corrupting elements" that a positivist feels ought to be purged for the sake of "the reasonableness of discourse" (Bennett 1976, p. 244). However, citing Kenneth Burke, Bennett argues that ambiguity can actually prove an advantage, in that it "makes possible the transformation by means of which a symbolic act develops" (Bennett 1976, p. 247). Burke's analysis of the speeches on love in the *Phaedrus*, says Bennett, illustrates this advantage: because of "the ambiguity of 'love'," the transformation in speech by Socrates, from erotic love to divine love and finally to "the principles of loving speech," can be made possible (Bennett 1976, p. 248).

Likewise, the reason that the ancient Chinese used Heaven to refer to two seemingly antithetical concepts is because "Heaven" as an ambiguous term had materialized a conceptual transformation. Just as the Western "love" could mean both "erotic love" and "divine love," the Chinese "Heaven" could be used—with a degree of comfort—to

<sup>37</sup> Using the phenomena of four seasons, day and night, life and death, etc., had been a cliché among ancient Chinese thinkers to show the existence of a natural order and, further, of the governing force of the Dao.

<sup>38</sup> This may explain, in part, why Daoism later deteriorated into mystic and even superstitious practices, whereas Confucianism came to enjoy the status of state orthodoxy.

represent an "active conscious will," as well as the "source of universal order." Because of this "heavenly" ambiguity (which, I believe, has opened wider space for rhetorical maneuvering), we probably can imagine what would happen next: the king, or Son of Heaven, can utilize Heaven to symbolize his power sanctioned by the divine, as well as his moral authority derived from the order of the universe. I would not say that "the centrality of kingship" (Ching 1997, p. 36) in Chinese society up to the 1911 revolution had been built completely upon the ambiguity of Heaven as a conceptual term; however, it is important to realize how Heaven, with its dual association with the divine and the cosmic, has played a central role in formulating a discourse that transformed the king into "the paradigmatic individual, reflecting in himself so much of that which is greater than himself: the universe as an organic whole, vibrant and alive" (Ching 1997, p. 66).

Perhaps more significant, and more relevant to philosophy and rhetoric alike, is that the Chinese "Heaven" has blurred the line of demarcation between ethos and logos. If ethos signifies power and logos truth (as has been discussed earlier), then we might say that Heaven signifies both, because of its conceptual ambiguity or dual association. That is to say, Heaven can be used as both ethos and logos, and for both rhetorical and philosophical purposes. I have already explained the centrality of Heaven to Chinese ethos, which I think is essentially in the rhetorical category because of its conventional, or cultural, nature. The idea of Heaven used as logos seems self-explanatory if we go back to what was discussed a little earlier: namely, humanity as implied in the heavenly, a moral order in the natural, the transcendent in the cosmic, etc., as all of these can be categorized as truthful and therefore philosophical.<sup>39</sup>

The following passage, from the *Four Texts of the Yellow Emperor* (Chang and Feng 1998), may exemplify Heaven's ethos/logos ambiguity:

As for the principle of [human] affairs, it depends on whether one complies with [the way of heaven] or rebels against it. If one's achievement transgresses [the ways of] heaven, then there is punishment by death. If one's achievement is not enough as heaven requires, then one retreats without any fame. If one's achievement accords with heaven, one will thereby attain great fame. It is the principle of [human] affairs. One who complies will enjoy life; one who follows the principles will succeed; one who is rebellious will suffer death; one who loses [will have no] fame. (Chang and Feng 1998, p. 139)<sup>40</sup>

In the first place, the passage may be summarized as something like "following the Dao of Heaven," in that it advises readers to act in compliance with Heaven. In this sense, Heaven is used as logos, because it represents a moral order guiding human behavior, something the ancient Chinese would accept as true and absolute. However, if we take a closer look at the passage, we may sense that it is actually advocating the doctrine of the Golden Mean, advising people against being too aggressive or too shy in getting what they want. Thus, the repeated use of Heaven can be seen as a strategy of ethos for the purpose of adding to the appeal of the message. (That is, even though less appealing, the message itself still stays if the author removed "Heaven" from the text.) What is more, Heaven is invoked for its power in punishing those who rebel and in rewarding those who follow—a clear indication of ethos being applied. I may appear overreaching in my explanation, but what seems clear is that "Heaven" is behind both logos and ethos in the text.

The oneness of ethos and logos is not uniquely Chinese. The fact that Plato tried to split philosophy from rhetoric but failed to do so suggests that the truthful simply cannot be separated from the conventional or culturally acceptable in the first place. However,

<sup>39</sup> How to decide what is true or not true is really an epistemological or methodological (e.g., scientific demonstration) issue. Since different cultures may have different epistemological approaches, it is important not to set a universal standard. The Dao, which is regarded as the absolute among the Chinese, may appear ludicrous to the Western mind; the Platonic Truth, which may have an enduring appeal to Westerners, would make little sense to the Chinese. Those Chinese ideas, such as humanity implied in the heavenly, may sound untrue to a Westerner, but they are true or truthful to the Chinese and approached as such by Chinese philosophers. That is why I categorize them as the philosophical and treat them as logos.

<sup>40</sup> From Chang and Feng (1998) *The Four Political Treatises of the Yellow Emperor*. See Section 8, Book I.

due to the dominance of logocentric thinking, that awareness has gone largely ignored in the Western rhetorical/philosophical tradition. I have argued that the ancient Chinese were pragmatic in their attitudes towards truth; instead of separating them, they blended the rhetorical with the philosophical and the acceptable with the truthful, thus making it possible for ethos and logos to become one. This is seen in the application of Heaven in early Chinese writings, which can help bridge the gap between the two seemingly different categories as presented in the West. We may use a simple diagram for illustration (Figure 1). due to the dominance of logocentric thinking, that awareness has gone largely ignored in the Western rhetorical/philosophical tradition. I have argued that the ancient Chinese were pragmatic in their attitudes towards truth; instead of separating them, they blended the rhetorical with the philosophical and the acceptable with the truthful, thus making it possible for ethos and logos to become one. This is seen in the application of Heaven in early Chinese writings, which can help bridge the gap between the two seemingly different categories as presented in the West. We may use a simple diagram for illustration(Figure 1).

*Humanities* **2021**, *10*, x FOR PEER REVIEW 18 of 21

have no] fame. (Chang and Feng 1998, p. 139)<sup>40</sup>

As for the principle of [human] affairs, it depends on whether one complies with [the way of heaven] or rebels against it. If one's achievement transgresses [the ways of] heaven, then there is punishment by death. If one's achievement is not enough as heaven requires, then one retreats without any fame. If one's achievement accords with heaven, one will thereby attain great fame. It is the principle of [human] affairs. One who complies will enjoy life; one who follows the principles will succeed; one who is rebellious will suffer death; one who loses [will

In the first place, the passage may be summarized as something like "following the Dao of Heaven," in that it advises readers to act in compliance with Heaven. In this sense, Heaven is used as logos, because it represents a moral order guiding human behavior, something the ancient Chinese would accept as true and absolute. However, if we take a closer look at the passage, we may sense that it is actually advocating the doctrine of the Golden Mean, advising people against being too aggressive or too shy in getting what they want. Thus, the repeated use of Heaven can be seen as a strategy of ethos for the purpose of adding to the appeal of the message. (That is, even though less appealing, the message itself still stays if the author removed "Heaven" from the text.) What is more, Heaven is invoked for its power in punishing those who rebel and in rewarding those who follow—a clear indication of ethos being applied. I may appear overreaching in my explanation, but what seems clear is that "Heaven" is behind both logos and ethos in the

The oneness of ethos and logos is not uniquely Chinese. The fact that Plato tried to split philosophy from rhetoric but failed to do so suggests that the truthful simply cannot be separated from the conventional or culturally acceptable in the first place. However,


**Figure 1.** Diagram of Oneness of Chinese Heaven. **Figure 1.** Diagram of Oneness of Chinese Heaven.

According to Kenneth Burke, human beings are capable of both using and misusing "verbal symbols," which can in turn become the "realities of human existence" (Bennett 1976, pp. 243–44). This would imply that language practice, as a symbolic or signifying action, creates meanings that may not cohere with reality in the true sense. Further, it suggests that language itself may even imply or constitute reality (i.e., the signifier becomes the signified, Derrida would say), a point that early Chinese thinkers, such as Laozi and Confucius, would have fully appreciated. Indeed, Heaven would be a good example to illustrate how a language symbol can be used, misused, or even abused to create reality far beyond our imagination. The fact that Heaven had permeated through Chinese culture <sup>40</sup> From Chang and Feng's (1998) *The Four Political Treatises of the Yellow Emperor*. See Section 8, Book I. According to Kenneth Burke, human beings are capable of both using and misusing "verbal symbols," which can in turn become the "realities of human existence" (Bennett 1976, pp. 243–44). This would imply that language practice, as a symbolic or signifying action, creates meanings that may not cohere with reality in the true sense. Further, it suggests that language itself may even imply or constitute reality (i.e., the signifier becomes the signified, Derrida would say), a point that early Chinese thinkers, such as Laozi and Confucius, would have fully appreciated. Indeed, Heaven would be a good example to illustrate how a language symbol can be used, misused, or even abused to create reality far beyond our imagination. The fact that Heaven had permeated through Chinese culture for thousands of years may point to the triumph of a language symbol and the reality created within such a symbol, despite its conceptual ambiguity. Finally, I would like to point out that the oneness of ethos and logos is indeed the triumph of ethnocentrism, in that it indicates that the rational appropriation of logos cannot be set apart from the irrational, conventional, cultural, or rhetorical projection of ethos—and that philosophy, in the end, stands "in defense of un-reason" (Bennett 1976, p. 243).

### **10. Conclusions**

text.

Aristotelian ethos is unique but not universal, for inspiring "trust" does not necessarily have to go through a process of character-based self-projection, as shown in the example of *cheng-yan* or "ethos of sincereness" in early Chinese rhetoric. Further, the notion of collective ethos casts doubt on the applicability of an individualistic ethos in non-Western cultural settings, as the former is constructed out of a cultural heritage without a rhetor's avowed authorship of a text. This stands in contrast to Western ethotic practice, in which the rhetor becomes a "signifier" of ethos "standing *inside* an expanded text" (Baumlin 1994, p. xvi), a practice that reinforces the perception of rhetoric as an individualistic enterprise.

Heaven, a concept culturally prevalent in early Chinese society, has been discussed rather extensively in this essay for the purpose of further exploring collective ethos as a function of a cultural heritage, in which Heaven plays a key role in creating Chinese ethos. To put the discussion in perspective, the essay has also addressed, albeit briefly, the centrality of logos to the Western tradition, or logocentrism, versus that of ethos to the Chinese, or ethnocentrism. Just as there are historical, cultural, or epistemological reasons behind logocentrism in the West, the ethocentric turn of Chinese rhetoric has to be appreciated in light of a cultural tradition that carries its own historical complexities and philosophical intricacies. As I understand it, Heaven in its role as a defining attribute of Chinese ethos reveals a unique cultural heritage shaped by a collective human desire

in seeking "a higher consciousness of oneness with the universe" (Ching 1997, p. xiii). Historically, Heaven symbolizes, and has been institutionalized into, the power of kingship because of its dual association with the divine and the cosmic in Chinese culture. In the former case, Heaven represents the ultimate ethos that only a king or emperor can lay claim to; in the latter, Heaven intimates the order of the universe that a king or emperor can appropriate to secure his moral authority over *tian-xia* (all under Heaven). And because the order of the universe (the Dao, indeed) is conceptually close to what might be called the absolute, or Truth, in Western ideology, Heaven can be said to represent the truthful in the philosophical sense. One may thus conclude that in ancient Chinese discourse, the concept of Heaven blends into one power and truth, ethos and logos, and, finally, rhetoric and philosophy.

While it is impossible to exhaust discussions on the subject, what has been presented here ought to give some idea as to how Chinese ethos had evolved on a track rather different from the Western tradition. The collectivist nature of Chinese ethos may be better understood if we look at it in terms of a cultural construct or a function of a cultural heritage, traced all the way back to early Chinese society, where rulers would engage in shamanic or religious practices to signify, and mystify, their power and authority with the suggestion of divine and heavenly charisma.

Nevertheless, I feel that this investigation is far from over, especially if we look at Confucius' self-cultivation. The idea of self-cultivation has its political and moral purpose of restoring *li*, but it also points to the ideological differences between the East and West in view of the individual and its relationship to society at large. In Chinese culture, the self has been traditionally downplayed, which helps explain why it has been out of the picture where Chinese ethos is projected. Investigating what Confucius and his followers had to say of the virtue of self-cultivation and their impact on the rhetorical practices of later generations might shed additional light on Chinese ethos as a cultural construct.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Acknowledgments:** The author wishes to thank the peer reviewers for their helpful feedback and thank the editors of this special issue and of *Humanities* for their valuable work and support.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

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