"Global
Governance
and the Critical Public.
The Public Work of Rhetoric_nodrm
2. Arthur Schopenhauer neatly characterized Kant's fundamental argument: "Kant's greatest merit is the distinction of the phenomenon from the thing-in-itself, based on the proof that between things and us there always stands the intellect, and that on this account they cannot be known according to what they may be in themselves. . . . The complete diversity of the ideal from the real, is the fundamental characteristic of Kant- ian philosophy" (World as Will, 417-18). If Kant is correct, this means that the public work of rhetoric must deal directly with the nature of this "intellect," or the discursive ways in which we come to negotiate and understand our world.
3. Semiotic theory can be traced to the rather different work of Ferdinand de Saus- sure and Charles S. Peirce. The main difference between their two semiotic theories is that Saussure, a linguist, did not feature the referent (or the material object), as did Peirce, with, in my opinion, serious consequences for practical thinking about the relationship between systems of signification and the material world. For a succinct discussion of
70 M. Lane Bruner
these two theorists and their impact on studies of subjectivity, see Silverman, Subject of Semiotics.
4. For a representative interpretation of Jacques Lacan's theory of the Real, see Z ? iz ? ek, "Schagend, aber nicht Treffend," 195-97.
5. For an introduction to the political dimensions of Lacan, see Stavrakakis, Lacan. See also McConnell and Gillett, "Lacan"; Biesecker, "Rhetorical Studies. "
6. On how the discursive construction of madness has itself been historically mad, see Foucault, History of Madness; see also Foucault, Fearless Speech.
7. The term "common sense" is fraught with conceptual complications that cannot be explored adequately here. For those interested in the range of such complications, see Schaeffer, Sensus Communis; Holton, "Bourdieu"; Lyotard, "Sensus Communis"; Bor- mann, "Some 'Common Sense. '"
8. One lives within a personal state (both a material state and a "state of mind"), a web of interpersonal and professional "states" (and states of mind), and within a web of collective states (political, religious, racial, gendered, and so forth) with their mate- rial and imagined dimensions. All of these states are interwoven with the ultimately unknowable and ever-emerging reality of nature. The public work of rhetoric, concep- tualized as the construction of the healthy state, therefore, has multiple dimensions and can take place at many levels. My focus here will only be on the rhetorical construction of collective (national) identities.
9. Once one is aware of the discursive dimensions of subjectivity, however, one still may engage in "strategic essentialism" when combating essentialist problems. See Mar- tin, "Methodological Essentialism. " See Sandoval, Methodology of the Oppressed, for other types of "differential consciousness. "
10. The literature on identity and politics is vast and ranges from the political dimen- sions of personal identity, to debates in aesthetics, to collective identity construction. For a mere sampling, see Goffman, Presentation of Self; Morgan, Inventing the People; Ander- son, Imagined Communities; Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power; Sennett, Fall of Pub- lic Man; Rajchman, Identity in Question. Such texts, obviously, only scratch the surface of what is available on the broad topic of language and identity.
11. I defend this claim in detail in my most recent book, Democracy's Debt.
12. One well-known attempt to explain the logic of the relationship between the material and ideational economy was made by Karl Marx. Marx, German Ideology. For a critique of the essentialist assumptions in Marxism, see Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.
13. See Bruner, Strategies of Remembrance; Bruner, "Rhetorics of the State.
14. Bruner, Democracy's Debt, esp. chapter 2; Bruner, "Taming 'Wild' Capitalism"; Bruner, "Global Constitutionalism"; Bruner, "Global Governance. "
15. Bruner, "Carnivalesque Protest"; Bruner, "Norm Revolutions"; Bruner and Marin, "'Democracies' in Transition. "
16. Bruner and Morozov, Market Democracy.
17. Weintraub, "Theory and Politics. "
18. See Dewey, Public and Its Problems.
19. For histories and theories related to the construction of "peoples," see Morgan,
Inventing the People; Bruner, "Rhetorical Theory"; McGee, "In Search of 'the People. '" 20. For Laclau's theory of the public, see On Populist Reason.
21. On the notions of subaltern and counterpublics, see Fraser, "Rethinking the Pub- lic Sphere"; Asen and Brouwer, Counterpublics and the State; Warner, Publics and Counter- publics.
The Public Work of Critical Political Communication 71
22. No hegemonic system--and, therefore, no state--can fully meet the demands of everyone, and thus there is always a certain "violence" associated with such systems/ states. Derrida grappled with the violence of justice and its relationship to the limits of rationality and reason in several of his later essays. See Derrida, Rogues. For a much ear- lier essay dealing with similar issues, see Benjamin, "Critique of Violence. "
23. See Bruner, "Rhetorical Criticism. "
24. Deconstructionists are right to point out that "fields of vision" are enabled by a "blind spot," or a necessary and organizing absence. This, then, is the radical gap within subjectivities themselves, and it is not the same as the gap between subjectivity and materiality.
25. For an enlightening look at deceptive public memory and history education in the United States, see Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me. For a look at how corporate communication impacts "public" spaces, see Klein, No Logo; Mayhew, New Public.
26. Debord, Society of the Spectacle; Debord, Comments on the Society.
27. Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, 165-67.
28. This is hardly a controversial claim, for the Second World War can be traced in no
small part to debt relations between the United States, Britain, and France, and the ulti- mate impact of U. S. debt policy on German war reparations (though there were many other important reasons, not the least of which was the political/economic history of nationalism). On the role of debt in the world wars, see Hudson, Super Imperialism, 58-161.
29. For a complete transcript of Bush's address, titled "Freedom at War with Fear," see http://www. whitehouse. gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8. html (accessed May 24, 2006). Frighteningly enough, Joseph Goebbels's "New Year's Speech" on December 31, 1939, has an eerily familiar ring: "[Our enemies] hate our people because [they are] decent, brave, industrious, hardworking and intelligent. They hate our views, our social policies, and our accomplishments. They hate us as a Reich and as a community. They have forced us into a struggle for life and death. We will defend ourselves accordingly. " For a transcript of the speech, see http://www. calvin. edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb21. htm (accessed May 26, 2006).
My point in drawing this comparison is not to equate the Bush administration and National Socialism (although his family's financial dealings are quite "interesting"), but simply to provide examples of how official state discourse tends to create grand and abstract explanations for very real and specific historical causes, and since the general public's understanding of historical facts is so thin, these abstract explanations become the basis for their own understanding, oftentimes with dire consequences. For accounts of Prescott Bush's "interesting" financial activities, see Aris and Campbell, "How Bush's Grandfather"; Phillips, American Dynasty.
30. Bill Mahr and the Dixie Chicks are two of the more well known examples, though content analyses of actual media coverage leading up to the war reveals the almost com- plete absence of voices providing anything in the way of historical or political context. See, for example, Hudson Mohawk Independent Media Center, "Independent Media in a Time of War," http://video. google. com/videoplay? docid=-6546453033984487696 (accessed June 8, 2008). Cynics might argue that any account of political context would necessarily be biased, and some psychoanalysts might argue that of course the hege- monic public is incapable of dealing more directly with the terrible Thing (ultimately unknowable Nature), but this, I maintain, is to categorically confuse the necessary dis- tance between language and materiality and the relative distance between accounts of materiality and that which actually occurred.
72 M. Lane Bruner
31. Z ? iz ? ek, Welcome to the Desert. See also Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 29-40. According to the theoretical perspective presented here, the "stage" is set in both inten- tional and unintentional ways.
32. For a sampling of the literature on public memory, memorialization, and the poli- tics of memory, especially in Germany, Russia, and Canada, see Bruner, Strategies of Re- membrance, 125-35.
33. Bruner, "Rhetorical Criticism. "
34. See Laclau, On Populist Reason. However, Laclau completely ignores the important work on collective identity construction done by rhetoricians in the United States.
35. The memorial stirred considerable controversy. For a thorough critique of Holo- caust memorials as an exemplary instance of the public work of rhetoric, see Carrier, Holocaust Monuments.
36. Hartmann, Bitburg in Moral, xii.
37. Ibid. , xiv. Kathryn M. Olson also discusses how Reagan attempted to redefine the notion of "victims" prior to and during his Bitburg visit. See Olson, "Controversy. "
38. Brockmann, "Bitburg Deconstruction. " 39. Olson, "Controversy. "
40. Brockmann, "Bitburg Deconstruction," 163.
41. Bruner, Strategies of Remembrance, 68-88; Charland, "Constitutive Rhetoric. "
42. On the parade of sovereignties, see Bruner, Strategies of Remembrance, 40-41.
43. The debate between those supporting elite management of public opinion and
those supporting public education is nicely traced in the work of Walter Lippmann and John Dewey. See Lippmann, Public Opinion; Dewey, Public.
44. Rhetorical critics, who tend to publish their work in obscure academic journals, are, as would be expected, generally ignored when it comes to their political warnings. For example, in 1939 Kenneth Burke penned a critical essay on Hitler's rhetoric, warn- ing that Hitler's dark "magic" was likely to spell doom for Europe. Nobody listened. See Burke, "Rhetoric of Hitler's Battle. "
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