Redefining or Revitalizing Rhetoric and Audience

            One of the most important concepts that I’ve gleaned from Olbrect and Perelman with The New Rhetoric, the anonymous author of Dissoi Logoi, and from Aristotle’s On Rhetoric that is there are no absolute truths and fool-patterns of speech that will always work. That is to say, a rhetor’s audience is always changing and that there is no formula or message that will work unquestionably.

             As Perelman says, “We must recognize that the appeal to reason must be identified not as an appeal to a single truth but instead as an appeal for the adherence of an audience” (1393). In other words, the universal audience is an idealistic, completely false dream; there are only particular audiences, which can differ based on the adherences they already have to a given topic. Anyone who has ever taught a class will intimately know that there are no universal audiences: what will work for one class will not necessarily work for another. This is because different students or audiences bring different experiences, thoughts, abilities, languages, and beliefs—different adherences—to the rhetorical table. 

Knowledge and the Straw Man

In reading and creating the schema for The New Rhetoric, I thought about knowledge in two different ways.

1. While reading, I kept going back to one of Jenn’s questions from last week.  In reference to Aristotle, she asks, “Is there a separation between persuasion and creating knowledge?”  I asked the same question of Perelman because his argumentation style - while seemingly allowing the audience more agency and control over the orator’s rhetoric – ultimately mimics Aristotle’s style.  The orator considers the audience’s objects of agreement and uses those to encourage the audience to adhere to the orator’s thesis (1393).  Unlike with Bitzer, the rhetorical act for Perelman (and Aristotle, I would argue) is not solely for encouraging action.  “The new rhetoric, like the old, seeks to persuade or convince, to obtain an adherence which may be theoretical to start with, although it may eventually be manifested through a disposition to act” (1391).  The beginning point of persuasion, Perelman implies, is affecting the audience on a “theoretical” level.  In The New Rhetoric, P and OT use the phrase “theoretical knowledge” (1377).  Carrying this over, then, one’s understanding of the theoretical can equate to one’s knowledge (though one could argue that the theoretical may only be one type of knowledge). If this is true, the orator is affecting (creating, changing, deleting?) the audience’s knowledge through persuasive means.  This implies that, for Perelman, persuasion and affecting theoretical (at least) knowledge are synonymous.

Lost in Space

Last Friday, I was sitting on my couch, reviewing Perelman and thinking nervously about schema.  Per Dr. Graban’s blog post, a schema is a visual representation of how things are organized in relationship to one another.  That seemed to make sense until I starting thinking about Perelman and wondering how I was going to make one schema that represented the complexities of both Perelman’s work and its context. 

Perelman’s work is situated historically, as he positions himself in relation to Aristotle, to Descartes, and to many other theorists.  The New Rhetoric is both influenced by and influences a rhetorical tradition that is divided into both thematic and historical periods – just like our anthology and may others like it (the table of contents of which may, itself, represent a kind of schema).  Perelman’s work is also situated socially.  His attempt to provide the legal profession with a system of argumentation that governs value has the potential for serious social repercussions.  As Condit discusses, Perelman’s essay can be situated in relation to class and gender, as the essay stands as a representation of elitist and sexist language (97).  Within the work itself, Perelman’s system of argumentation can be situated in relationship to dialectic.  The essay’s breakdown of various objects of agreement lends itself to a discussion of how those objects relate to both orator and audience.  

Pleasure, Audience, and Moral Relativism (each considered somewhat separately)

This week I have a string of thoughts that do not collectively amount to an argument, but they are the topics that I felt most interested in exploring. 

1) Dr. Graban argues in her thorough schema of Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca’s theory of argumentation that the authors agree with Pascal on the superiority of “the art of pleasing” over “the art of convincing” (1403), and she then associates pleasing with informal reasoning and convincing with formal logic. This argument made me reconsider Condit’s critique; perhaps Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca do not so thoroughly “repress” emotion as Condit seems to claim (Condit’s use of repress, see 98). Pleasure is an emotion, and by arguing for the selection of arguments that the rhetor believes will be the most effective in causing the audience’s adherence (which perhaps can be understood as the audience’s pleasure in agreeing with the rhetor), rather than for the selection of arguments solely on the basis of “logic,” Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca are affirming the emotional aspects of rhetoric. 

That being said, I still think that Condit’s critique was appropriate, since Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca did not choose to actively explore the affective aspects of rhetoric, particularly in proportion to their discussion of types of/approaches to argumentation, which might lead people to conclude that emotions do not play a role in rhetoric.

Dissoi Logoi, Disruptive Deconstruction, and Booyah Achieved

One of the few coherent thoughts I seemed to be able to muster for last week’s blog related to Aristotle’s Topics, and my question of whether or not his version of how to argue was necessarily a good thing as it seemed to assume it was okay to bend the rules as long as you win. Considering on page 210 Aristotle’s willingness to offer the idea that...

If the written law tells against our case, clearly we must appeal to the universal law, and insist on its greater equity and justice.

... I was a bit thrown off. In many ways, I’m reminded of the antics of Joel McHale’s character from Community, Jeff Winger, a lawyer forced to earn his degree from a community college when his law firm discovers his degree was actually fake. In the pilot episode, Jeff tries to get an acquaintance of his at the school to provide him with answers to his Spanish test to avoid studying since Jeff was able to, in his former life as a lawyer, have Professor Duncan cleared of a DUI charge. The exchange I found interesting I’ve highlighted in the image I put together below:

Click the image to enlarge

The Challenge of the a priori

I arrive to this conversation late – but earnestly– and thank you for not minding that I participate.

For my first post, a pedagogical demonstration seems salient, if only because I am working through some of these same topics with my undergraduate students in ENG 4020 Rhetorical Theory and Practice.

Last week, we read “The Death of the Author” (Barthes, 1968) and “What Is An Author?” (Foucault, 1969) in the context of our unit on Agent/cy. The discussion surrounding these texts often and predictably inspires an impassioned defense of what students have come to understand as the writer, and whom they usually conflate with Barthes’ and Foucault’s Author, in spite of the marked differences between Barthes’ Author and Foucault’s Author; between Barthes’ Author and scriptor; and between Barthes’ scriptor and their own notions of writer. After several sessions of recursive explanation, we finally arrive – as a class – at the profound realization that our defenses for the role of writer (whether that role is actual, imagined, or historically situated) are inherently post-structuralist. They assume an attitude towards text that accounts for standpoint and positioning, and they assume that we assign some agency to the text – to the discourse itself. 

[Erin’s post lucidly shares a similar realization in noting that Barthes’ reader is “the space on which all quotations that make up a writing are inscribed” (147), i.e., in realizing the reader as a critical and epistemic destination.]

Rhetoric as a house? And applying Barthes' ideas to visual rhetoric?

     One thing I took away from our first weekly was that Aristotle and Quintilian, despite existing in significantly different political (and thus, rhetorical) climes, seem to share similarly formulaic approaches toward the study of rhetoric. Both are seeking relatively solid definitions of ideas and terms, and because of this, their writing seems fairly straightforward and digestible; is this because they are pioneers working in a foundational stage of the study of rhetoric?

     This is going to seem like a random turn, but in my mind, I associate them with the character George Monroe (Kevin Kline) from the movie Life as a House. Monroe, who is dying a drawn-out death from cancer, works every day on the top of a cliff trying to build a house for a family that is not his own.  He puts one beam up after the other until he has a basic edifice; and then, when he becomes particularly weak, he attracts help from his friends and family, and they all work together toward finishing what will become, one day, a beautiful, completed home.

Reflective Mapping (A Foundation)

Full disclosure: the ancients and I have never gotten along. It’s not that I can’t read texts that immediately relate to the beeps and boops of computers and videogames I find so soothing in my own scholarship or research, but rather because I find myself in a persistent struggle to make sense of how these texts which seem so embedded in context relate to my experiences here and now as a teacher and scholar of rhetoric and composition. For every important and intriguing line to me, a dozen more seem so hopelessly embedded in context that it becomes difficult for me to focus as I read on what is or is not important. This is probably much more a criticism of my own twitchy tendencies when I read than anything else, mind you, but I nonetheless find this persistent tension when I read ancient texts (or really, any that are not from the latter 20th century); how does this embedded text that feels so divorced from my reality relate to me, my students, or my studies? Despite some disconnects in format, I found the trace exceptionally rewarding this last week for precisely that reason: by applying a terministic screen to my reading of Aristotle and Quintilian, I was able to identify passages of interest far more easily than would have otherwise been possible for me as a reader. Also, while the process of mapping or schematizing may have fell short of the intended goals of the trace, I found it helpful to see the ways in which these texts differed. Specifically, the focus on genre in Aristotle, and the focus on Style in Quintilian.

ReCooperating Audience Agency

During our discussion of the rhetorical situation as theorized in Bitzer, Vatz, and Biesecker, agency seemed to be a recurring--and slippery--concept. Following the discussion, we put forward the questions, What is an agent in rhetorical situation? How do we theorize agency? Though we did not explicitly address these questions during our discussion of Aristotle, Quintilian and Barthes, I think these questions are important to consider in relation to rhetor and audience. For the purposes of this post, I’ll use the following definition of agency from the OED: “Action or intervention producing a particular effect; means, instrumentality, mediation.”

Megan K. asks two questions in her post that work well as a starting point for thinking about agency. Of Aristotle’s text, she writes, “In that view, a rhetor is not persuading his audience in order to help them see Truth; rather, the rhetor persuades the audience to believe what he wants them to believe, be it truth or not.  So, for Aristotle, are manipulation and persuasion the same?”  

Derivative Iterations of the Author-God or Those Damnable Bebe's Kids

During Tuesday’s class session, I poorly referenced Dr. Stacy Wolf’s wonderful article (1), wherein she addresses some of the challenges of teaching post-modern concepts to a thoroughly post-modern group of students. Here is an excerpt from that piece:

More importantly for this essay, as I later figured out, Savran’s motivation for writing “Toward a Historiography of the Popular” and his imagined adversarial reader completely baffled my students. More precisely, it was entirely illegible as an argument at all. The essay didn’t speak to them because their cultural hierarchies are different than Savran’s or mine. They don’t live in a world in which high art is better than pop culture. They have grown up being thoroughly postmodern, moving easily among media in a culture that privileges what John Seabrook calls the “nobrow”: the mind-bogglingly active shifting of cultural categories of value and worth, both commercially and intellectually. Later in the semester, they were furious to learn that musical theatre critics and scholars love Stephen Sondheim and hate Andrew Lloyd Webber. They dutifully researched the debates—and found them interesting—but disagreed thoroughly. They analyzed Phantom of the Opera with as much respect and seriousness as Sunday in the Park with George.

Week 1: Aristotle and Barthes go to Dinner.

     Upon tackling the trace of Aristotle and Quintilian along the scope of ethos I began to wonder how Roland Barthes' argument about the death of the author would interact with the weight that Aristotle places on the ethos of the Rhetor. In class we touched on this conversation when we assessed our Aristotelian questions against Barthes' argument. Which of the questions we are left with after a close, critical reading of Aristotle on ethos are actually dethroned when Barthes enters the scene? The role of the Rhetor for Aristotle is a high moral calling, is the role of the Author such a high assignment for Barthes? Does the character of the Author matter for Barthes in the way it is so critical for Aristotle?
   

Week 1: The Purpose of Language and Motivation of the Sciptor

The concept I most grappled with while reading and discussing Aristotle and Quintilian (and, eventually, Barthes) was the purpose of language.  (Note: For the purpose of this post, I am going to conflate rhetoric and language.)  Thinking about the purpose of language for each of the authors also helped me clarify and rephrase a question I asked on Tuesday.

For Aristotle, language is used to persuade.  To take Jenn's analysis, Aristotle's rhetor begins with an accepted (at least accepted by a particular audience) truth and builds on the truth to persuade the audience to accept a new, adapted truth.  Aristotle's persuasion, then, seems very similar to manipulation, particularly if we take the view that Aristotle's definition of truth is fluid (see Kendall and my exploratory for an argument of this view).  In that view, a rhetor is not persuading his audience in order to help them see Truth; rather, the rhetor persuades the audience to believe what he wants them to believe, be it truth or not.  So, for Aristotle, are manipulation and persuasion the same?

Week 1: Classification, Mystification, and Revelation; or, Too Many "Tions" for One Post

                Since class on Tuesday I have realized the inadequacy of my performance on the trace assignment (and not just because Jason and I chose to make a map…). I use the word inadequate because through my own short-sightedness I became lost in the details and failed to see how Dr. Graban’s questions related to some of the larger questions that I should have been asking myself; I became what I both dislike and admire in Quintilian and Aristotle: a classifier. Worse, I became a classifier without a purpose.

                The overarching questions that I should have been asking are, “What is ‘genre’? And what do Quintilian and Aristotle express (explicitly or implicitly) about this topic?” These questions seem obviously implied by the more specific questions that I was assigned to address, but they are what I neglected to keep at the forefront in my trace, and they are what I wish to examine in this brief space.

Week 1: Persuasion and the Creation of Knowledge

For the trace assignment, my group – myself, Ashley, and Megan R. – focused on the audience and the rhetor.  Before beginning my actual argument, I would like to echo Ashley’s comment that the table format was simultaneously helpful and problematic. While it did help me put Aristotle and Quintilian in conversation with each other, the table also made distinctions between categories and texts where there may not have needed to be any.  In foregrounding the relationship between Rhetoric and Institutes of Oratory, the table obscured slightly the relationships between the books and chapters within each text.  For our next trace, I may rethink slightly the format of the table in relationship to the questions being asked.

Week 1 CBP: Confused and Enlightened

My group and I decided, in order to create a deeper understanding for the reader of our ethos and pathos trace, to break the questions up into a table. At first, this seemed like a very easy way to understand and present this information. However due to the break down of the questions we made, I noticed that the categories are very similar in scope, and it was hard to answer them without sounding repetitive. Some of the ideas in Aristotle and Quintilian have very subtle differences within each article, and categorizing and drawing harsher lines in my understanding of the texts complicated the thought process for me. I can only hope that my attempt at recognizing and harnessing those subtleties came through in the explanations.

It seemed as if sometimes it was hard to discern where one idea ended and another began, within my writing and in Aristotle's work. For example, it was difficult for me to explain and pick examples that demonstrated both the construction of ethos and pathos as art and various strategies of those arts. I suppose and hope that the subtle differences in diction allowed me to dig deeper and have a more nuanced understanding of how those two categories (developing art and its strategies) relate and how they differ.