Race, Space, and Rhetoric: Defining Community with
Discourse

Race, Space, and Rhetoric: Defining Community with
Discourse

Douglass Center, North End, Michael Burns

Abstract Only

In Michael’s talk, “Race, Space, and Rhetoric: Defining Community with
Discourse,” he considers the relationships among race, rhetoric, and the
built environment. The research takes up the predominantly black North
End neighborhood of Champaign-Urbana, with particular attention to the
history of the neighborhood’s park and community center. In addition to
offering a specific historical account of the activism and agency within
the black community, the speaker engages the role of discursive activity
in the making of real space. The talk locates black Americans’ struggles
for social, political, and economic equality by accounting for rhetorical,
discursive, and spatial considerations in the context of those struggles.
While legal and economic limits on mobility (for example, via Jim Crow
legislation and discriminatory housing practices) indelibly link racist
practices to spatial considerations (e.g. Weyeneth), space can also be
viewed as a necessary component in the process of making liberatory
claims (e.g. hooks). The study addresses how conceptions of space get
reinforced and/or reconsidered when subaltern communities speak and
write with space in mind. Michael’s attention to related texts and talk
underscores the ways in which discourse and rhetoric can facilitate the rearticulation
of legal and economic realities into more socially equitable
spaces.

Center for Writing Studies, University of Illinois

2011

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