Exigence and Revelation

In "Genre as Social Action", Miller writes that "rhetorical genres stem from organizing principles found in recurring situations that generate discourse characterized by a family of common factors" (153). These genres can be as varied, simplistic, or specific as the types related by M. A. K. Halliday: "'players instructing novice in a game,' 'mother reading bedtime story to child,' 'customer ordering goods over the telephone,' 'teacher guiding pupils,' 'discussion of a poem,' and the like" (157). The only real criteria is that they represent a recurring situation. In the case of Daniel's "Public Secrets", the type or genre is that of female inmate inside prison relating story to person from outside. (Although I don't think I have space to go in to it here, the inside/outside dynamic of Daniel's piece really interested me.) There is also the genre of marginalized/forgotten woman relating story to listener, such as the woman who describes how "so many women... at one point or another before they ever committed a crime, said 'Help'" and were ignored (Misty Rojo, "Public Secrets". Statements like this and others make the presence of a willing listener essential to the genre.

Behind the rhetorical genres and recurring situations is exigence, which I have tried (perhaps unsuccessfully to understand). What I think I know is that when it comes to relating a story, exigence is predetermined. It is the "factual component" (156) or the actuality of a situation, and it is objective. It also seems to form a cycle with rhetorical action, as rhetorical action stems from exigence and then leads back around to it again.
The fact that exigence is objective leads to difficulty in applying it to "Public Secrets" and works of any genre, because the voices of a piece such as "Public Secrets" are subjective. Miller asks if "rhetorical situation is not material and objective, but a social construct... how are we to understand exigence, which is at the core of the situation?" (157).

The problem is that genre is related to individual situations, which are subjective, and exigence is in the social world, not in individual perceptions. It is the bare bones of the way things are in society, but it is exigence which links the individual situations and perceptions to form "an objectified social need" (157). As I understand it, without exigence as the overarching social situation there is no way for individual stories to come together into social action.

Herbert Blumer says that "the preponderant portion of social action in a human society, particularly in a settled society, exists in the form of recurrent  patterns of joint action" (qtd. Miller, 158). This is what Daniel is accomplishing in "Public Secrets". By bringing together many voices she creates a recurrent situation, and by acting through the exigence or actuality of that situation moves toward social change. The existence of the recurrent provides insight into the human condition. In this case, through the voices of many women we learn the state not only of female inmates specifically, but of minority and lower-class women and the ways they are ignored. They were ignored as one voice, but many voices are more difficult to refuse. Working through the exigence of the situation, Daniels and the women she interviews are "[provided with] an occasion, and thus a form, for making public [their] private versions of things" (158). While the state of women's prisons in Southern California is unfortunately a "Public Secret", it is a secret told from the outside, and perhaps telling it from the inside will be a step towards social change.