Reflexivity is a complex and challenging process, and much easier said than done. It is ultimately played out in praxis, as we negotiate the several points of privilege through which we as scholars secure access to public discourses. Being aware of one's power both as a privilege and as an entry point for change also has to come with an awareness of how one engages this power. The articulation of power in one context might be a positive entry point for change, and yet in another context might constrain the articulations of diverse worldviews. On one hand, listening to the "other" becomes a communicative process for engaging with this power; on the other hand, this act of listening has to be connected with praxis that is directed at change. And it is precisely at that moment of praxis (which is where our continuous commitments ought to be) that we come face-to-face with the tensions and paradoxes imbued in particular courses of action. When we make choices, these choices are political, and working through these politics means continually engaging with the ways in which such politics ends up silencing the "other."
In a post made in response to the changes to how my discipline operates made by the Executive Committee of the largest organization of the discipline, the National Communication Association (NCA), one of the editors of a disciplinary journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs (RPA), Professor Martin J. Medhurst, a Distinguished Scholar of the discipline, calls out what he sees as the threat of identity (see below for his full piece published in the journal that he has edited for 20+ years, with 2019 SJR score of 0.27). In what he notes is a threat to the "scholarly merit" of the discipline, Professor Medhurst sets up a caricature of what he calls "identity." In his rhetorical construction of the struggles the NCA has faced over the years to find Distinguished Scholars of colour, he shares with us the facts. So let's look at the facts presented by this rhetor. It turns out, as a member of the Distinguished Scholar community of the NCA, Mr. Medhurst has problems wit...