" Obama's self-presentation in Dreams from my Father, writes Janny Scott, "leaves an impression of candidness and
authenticity
that gives it much of its power.
The Public Work of Rhetoric_nodrm
gov (accessed
August 31, 2008).
? The Prospects for the Public Work of Rhetoric
A Coda on Codes
Susan C. Jarratt
The stimulating essays in this book display rhetorics for our times: publics variously concrete and elusive, interventions at times tentative, of mixed suc- cess, but full of energy. Even the most vividly present settings become publics differently according to the rhetorical order, tasks, and understanding brought to bear on them (Coogan). For guidance, the authors reach back into the eighteenth-century public as Habermas envisioned it--"a collaborative search for the common good"--but also look forward, beyond the hesitations of the Wingspread participants, into a newly realized array of millennial publics. The "public workers" of this volume find a polis, as Hannah Arendt predicted: in "the organization of the people as it arises out of acting and speaking to- gether . . . its true space [lying] between people living together for this pur- pose, no matter where they happen to be. "1 A final word in response to these essays must work against finality in an effort to keep alive their activity, their fraught yet hopeful qualities: to the manifold and variegated qualities of the public works they record. Although there are oppositions and advocacies here, the dominant themes are qualification, principled hesitation, a stepping back from the reassuring rhetorics of pro, con, and happy compromise.
Like the participants in the Wingspread Conference of the 1960s, twenty- first-century public rhetoricians are made somewhat uneasy by the rhetorics of our times. Ackerman and Coogan identify this phenomenon as a problem of history: "What made Becker uneasy--what makes all of us uneasy--were publics that could not be contained by (or easily explained by) the rhetorical tradition, either in substance, style or medium. " Traditions must be made anew, and new histories--"lost geographies"--are called forth by contempo- rary problems. 2 Urging readers to envision a postmodern paideia, the editors invite rhetoric's history in, not as an obligatory grounding or an answer to a dilemma but as a resource. Rather than clarifying through a general enlight- enment, postmodern rhetorical history might resort to refraction: to gather
284 Susan C. Jarratt
diffuse sources from the present and angle them through the lens of the "prior" with the hope of sparking the imaginations of public rhetoric workers in the field, in the way that Coogan makes sophistic rhetoric over into a counter- public practice for Richmond teens. What are the rhetorical arts needful in this time, one in which "free-speech" and rational argument--or at least the abil- ity to speak across ideological and political divides--seem to some to have lost force? Is there something other, or something more to be learned from pre- modern rhetorics? To shift the figure, might some newer historical narratives serve not as a stash but a font?
According to Bruner, "one way we can do the public work of rhetoric is by mapping the distance between history and memory, understanding how far those imaginaries are from historical fact, and with what consequence. " Bruner refers to large-scale public memories of war, but we might apply his recommendation to rhetoric's histories and to ancient political history more generally. Changes in our own geopolitical realities may make it less and less possible to overlook (or to treat with a bland acceptance) the fact that the dominant ancient rhetorical cultures, even during the democracy and the republic, operated through the power of empire.
Empire
"What word but 'empire,'" writes Michael Ignatieff in a New York Times Maga- zine article of January 2003, "describes the awesome thing that America is becoming? "--this on the eve of the invasion of Iraq. 3 With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the growth of multinational corporations, positive uses of this term begin to appear in middle-of-the-road political science journals and media outlets such as Foreign Affairs, Harvard Review, and the Wall Street Journal. 4 More pointed comparisons with Pax Romana, the Roman peace, can be found in political strategy statements produced by the Defense Department under George H. W. Bush and in the report of The Project for the New American Cen- tury, a nonprofit educational organization, used as a basis for Condoleezza Rice's 2001 National Security Strategy statement. The project's report, titled "Rebuilding America's Defenses," overtly argues that the United States, as the "world's most preeminent power," should resolve to "shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests. " Despite the long-standing priorities of containment and deterrence, these documents openly employ a rhetoric of empire, referring to a global Pax Americana and "American peace" without irony 5
In those years, we lived in a Pax Americana run by a government taking its cues from classical scholars in shaping its foreign policy. Daniel Mendel- sohn, in his brilliant New Yorker reviews of new publications in ancient Greek history and literature, points out, for example, the "tendentious" angles of vision in a new history of the Peloponnesian war by Donald Kagan, coauthor of the strategy statement mentioned above, and in Victor Davis Hanson's works
The Prospects for the Public Work of Rhetoric 285
on Greek military strategy, recommended by Vice President Cheney to his staff during the 2001 war in Afghanistan. 6 These are the intellectuals who have guided the world's newest empire through the first, devastating decade of the new millennium. Some rhetors here are working very locally, in the geogra- phies of community or neighborhood, but sometimes with a reach into the geographies of empire (for example, Cushman with the victims of nineteenth- century U. S. internal imperialism against American Indians; Grabill against the pressures driving international shipping). Many of the rhetors in this vol- ume choose to work for and with disenfranchised groups, helping them to find and hone words that will give them power, working across class and pro- fessional space to put rhetorical expertise to work. The strength of the volume lies in its insistence on a dialogue among history (C. Miller), theory, analysis, and practical community work. Yet another direction we might take with a postmodern paideia would turn toward those in power, asking what are the networks of affiliation, the rhetorics of space, and rhetorical strategies that will enable us to move the emperors of our own era? 7
This is not an easy task. What can be done rhetorically in our times, diffi- cult times for rhetoric, when an Enlightenment dream of democracy is no longer recognizable, let alone sustainable (Cintron): a "twilight of democ- racy"? 8 What can be done rhetorically when the forces of "conspiracy" (Ack- erman and Coogan) do not listen to reason? "Democracy is a beautiful thing," says George W. Bush in February 2003, as millions of protesters worldwide urged caution on the eve of the attack of Iraq. 9 The beauty lies in the freedom to demonstrate, but the obligation of those in power to listen, engage, and respond has fallen into disuse. The range of opinions reaching into and influ- encing the world's most powerful ruler has narrowed dramatically, and the multitude of ethics violations charged against legislators brings home the "inartistic" force brought to bear by corporations and heavily underwritten interest groups. 10 And yet as Ackerman and Coogan insist, scholars in The Public Work of Rhetoric "reject the idea that public life is dead, that it has been stripped of agitation, assembly, and deliberation. " They create and call upon poie^sis for the production of thick publics (Bruner), recognize rhetorical agency as protean and promiscuous (Campbell), and in so doing, call forth a newly imagined rhetorical history to underwrite them. If Bush calls democracy "beautiful," rhetoricians have the option to take him at his word, returning to beauty, wonder, and fantasy as weapons, not of mass distraction, but of a new political imagination.
"Lost Geographies" of Public Life
The editors of this volume, citing Neil Smith and Setha Low, cast the problem of publics into a wider space than any preexisting agora or ekklesia. 11 Histories of rhetoric are replete with lost geographies, and not only those pockets of populations excluded from public life whose words, in whatever forms they
286 Susan C. Jarratt
could take, are waiting to be retrieved. The culturally Greek intelligentsia from the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire inhabited one of those geogra- phies. Until recently encased within a narrative of decline into "literariness," scholars have begun to reconsider this period in the last decade or so, arriv- ing at a dramatic counterstatement to centuries-old historiography: that pub- lic rhetoric did not die out in the era of the Roman Empire. Opportunities for imagining, performing, and arguing for collective good for subjects of empire did not disappear but persisted--coded within an array of unfamiliar genres. 12
The intersections of geography, language, and cultural practices for these "Greeks" differs decidedly from the famous autochthony of classical Athens. Tied neither to birthplace nor ancestry--that is, in the view of most critics, not to be understood as an "ethnicity"--Greek identity was a cultural acqui- sition on the part of a select group of elite men, often Roman citizens, closely identified with their provincial cities in the Near East. Overlooked or de- emphasized in most treatments of these rhetors is a recognition that their performances enabled them to take on the responsibilities of the public in- tellectual on behalf of imperial subjects in extremely complex, multilayered speaking situations. Adopting the stance of Greek rhetor usually signaled an alienation from Roman power but not exactly subjection; it was a claim for prominence in a stratified and competitive social world as well as a position from which to act as critic and adviser to the indigenous power brokers of a province, as well as to the Roman governor and, on occasion, emperor. Among the remnants they mined resided the memory of discourses of democratic deliberation with its attendant critique of tyranny.
Free Speech: Practice, Politics, Posture?
To speak openly and truthfully to those in power or to cloak your ideas and opinions in artful allusions: these were the terms of a rhetorical debate during a period when arbitrary violence, in the city itself as well as in the provinces and even against members of the elite classes, was a constant possibility. 13 As Peter Brown puts it, "a tide of horror lapped close to the feet of all educated persons. "14 From the conquest of Philip of Macedon over Greece at the end of democracy, to the imperial sweep of Alexander, to the rise of Rome as a conquering power in the third and second centuries B. C. E. , and finally to the declaration of empire by Augustus in 27 C. E. , public exchange took place in "in the suspicious atmosphere of a court society, where people tend to assume a demeanour conformable to the pleasure of the ruler. "15 Yet the textual tradition in Greek from the very beginning records examples of characters risking violent retribution to break through the censorious barrier to speak uncomfortable truths. Parrhe^sia originated in the classical period, and the recently published 1983 Berkeley lectures by Michel Foucault on its origins and history lay out its distinctive parameters as a rhetorical practice: the free- speaker "make[s] it manifestly clear and obvious that what he says is his own
The Prospects for the Public Work of Rhetoric 287
opinion . . . us[ing] the most direct words and forms of expression he can find. "16 Moreover, this "free-speaker" takes a risk, puts himself or herself in danger, by addressing someone in a position of power. The relationship to the interlocutor is a game, but with risk to only one party: it is a game but also a duty.
The "free-speaker"--parrhe^siastes--was assigned certain attributes in these discourses, a rhetorical posture that translated easily to republican Rome, with its legend and history of heroic challenge to tyranny, and became coded in a fusion of masculinity and national identity: "Rhetorical education was de- signed to instill in Roman boys habits that would make their masculinity lit- erally visible to the world: along with constructing logical arguments, handling narration and interrogation, and creative ways to use words, they learned to stand up straight, look others straight in the eye, gesticulate with grace and authority. "17 As incomplete as a description of Roman rhetorical practice and unsustainable as this posture was, it nonetheless constituted one of the layers of (always multiply mediated) cultural assumption under which Greek rhetors in the provincial East had to work.
"Free speech" lies at the heart of a rhetoric invented in classical Athens-- an ideology at least partially realized in practice--with its courts and delibera- tive assemblies. It is arguably the rhetoric that undergirds most contemporary educational rationales for courses in writing: the facility with language that enables public participation and assures the testing of ideas and policies in democratic forums. The persona most likely to deliver this speech is upright, honest, and straightforward, speaking earnestly in his or her own voice with nothing to hide. What Foucault suggests only briefly, but what Carolyn Miller discusses here for rhetoric more generally, and second sophistic rhetors ex- ploited creatively is "free speech" as itself a figure, a stance, oscillating in rela- tion to its other: "figured discourse. " Cloaking one's criticism in metaphors, or, even better, lodging it within allusions to Greek history, myth, and litera- ture, was not only a safer path for the Greek rhetor but sometimes more effec- tive because more impressive and artful. Frederick Ahl points out, "Blunt speech gives way to oblique speech in situations where the speaker is (or feels) threatened or unsure of his audience. Many ancient poets, and all ancient rhetorical theorists, lived when overt criticism of the ruling powers was dan- gerous. They sensed the need for obliqueness. But they also sensed the greater persuasiveness of oblique suggestion. " He goes on to observe that "rhetorical theorists wanted to train students not in how to achieve martyrdom, which requires no special education, but in how to deal successfully with the pow- erful and even shape and direct their power. "18 A successfully "figured" mes- sage gives the listener--a ruler, but also the others present--the pleasure of solving a mystery, of realizing the power of their common education: the paideia shared by Roman, Greek, and provincial elites alike. For Foucault, "the touchstone of the good ruler is his ability to play the parrhe^siatic game. "19
288 Susan C. Jarratt
Which "rulers"--power brokers--in our contemporary scene are willing to play such a game? In fact, the rhetorical, and thus political, success of George W. Bush in some part lay in his claim not to play the game of knowing, to be outside any paideia, to be the ignorant and thus innocent rustic operating through a kind of folk knowledge. A postmodern paideia demands the ability not only to take up stances on the part of public rhetors but to read the pos- tures of those in power and, most important, to engage them, or to play their games, or to play some other game that is recognizable across lines of power. That would be the definition of a paideia--a common cultural language that can be taken up by many. When progressive (or "left") journalism and schol- arship engages with the rhetorics of the powerful, the effect is most often a critique that marks difference. I have certainly engaged in such projects my- self. 20 We create thereby a standoff of parrhe^siastics, or worse, isolate ourselves like philosophers during the period of the Roman Empire: hermetic social critics who are not involved in or dirtied by these rhetorical/power games. Practicing rhetoric across the boundary of university and community, say Ackerman and Coogan, requires "a shedding of academic adornments, a dif- ferent professional disposition. " The public works rhetorician of the twenty- first century sheds the beard, robes, hermetic habits, and isolationist disdain of the philosopher of the imperial era, most often moving down the ladder of public legitimacy and enfranchisement. Is it possible to imagine moving in the other direction? One scene that comes to mind from the collection here is Grabill's conversation with the mayor at a party. Just imagine--
Dispositions
A fanciful anecdote recorded by Philostratus in his third-century Lives of the Sophists imagines the emperor Trajan seating the Sophist Dio (called Chrysos- tom, or Golden-Mouthed) by his side on the golden chariot in which he rides in triumphal processions, turning to him and saying, "I don't understand what you say but I love you as I love myself. "21 This scene, no doubt apocry- phal, dramatizes a relationship between rhetor and emperor organized around patronage and affiliation. Trajan, from a long-established Roman family that immigrated to Spain (a fully Romanized province) in his grandfather's time, came up through the army and was "adopted" by the emperor Nerva in 97 and chosen to succeed him without struggle in 98. Trajan stood as the first in a sequence of "good" emperors, following the violent and turbulent realms of Domitian and Nero before him. 22 He was a mild-tempered, generous, and judicious ruler who enacted a number of policies benefiting children and utilitarian building projects. He achieved more renown and popular goodwill, however, for his military conquest of Dacia and the elaborate gladiatorial games following thereon. He died in 117 returning from an attack on Parthi- ans in Armenia, an attempt to extend the eastern reach of the empire.
The Prospects for the Public Work of Rhetoric 289
Dio (40-110 or 120), a native of Prusa (now Bursa, on the Aegean coast of Turkey), chief city in the province of Bithynia, was born to wealthy parents who had been granted Roman citizenship. He was provided with a first-rate Greek education and, like many of the figures in this group, cultivated close relationships with powerful Romans, including the emperor Vespasian early in his career. Dio's free speaking, however, provoked the ire of Domitian, who exiled him from his native province and from Italy in 82. He was returned under Nerva in 96, and then formed a close relationship with Trajan, to whom he may have addressed his four discourses on kingship near the end of the century. 23
Why, in this made-up story, does the emperor say he does not understand what the Sophist says? 24 On one interpretation, we can note the importance of the Sophist's proximity that may override any particular position or piece of advice he may be offering; "love" or philia--manly friendship, is what mat- ters in the networks of power relations between rhetor and emperor. 25 On the level of rhetoric, the anecdote raises the question of how communication operated across cultural and power differences: not only what it was and was not possible to say, but how it was possible to be heard. In fact, local elites were essential to the management of the empire: "Everywhere it was the Roman policy to win over, and to enfranchise, the local leaders. "26 In the East, Roman rule maintained existing civic institutions and relied on the indigenous property-owners for crucial operations of the city.
So from the sophist's perspective, being heard and understood mattered a great deal, even though the historical distance and state of the archival record make linking any one sophistic discourse to a specific audience or outcome very difficult. 27 But, in an odd way, this circumstance provides a provocative mirror of the theoretical commitments in this volume in the adoption of a theory of "publics" over against "audience. " Public rhetors are concerned with the circulation of discourse--its call, its constituents, and the climate it cre- ates. These we can establish for the second sophistic, and they are, in many cases, powerfully oriented toward a vision of the polis as a sustaining form of human organization: the Greek concept and practice taken up--and blown up--by the Romans. Whether or not Trajan was influenced by Dio or by Pliny, a Roman of the same era who composed an extensive panegyric to the em- peror, at points arguing for the exercise of good government, the emperor could not have imagined or enacted his benevolent policies in the absence of a discourse outlining and supporting such actions. This idea could also be understood in terms of legitimation. The Greek rhetors played a role, literally, in keeping alive the imagination and value of democratic rule, on the one hand, and the condemnation of tyrannical imperial behavior, on the other. What Peter W. Rose identifies as the ideological work of Cicero's oratorical arguments is perhaps even more true of the epideictic discourses of the Greek
290 Susan C. Jarratt
rhetors: "An oration does more than propose a specific course of action: its persuasive function is aimed at constructing a vision of the real. . . . This vision of the real is the oration's enabling fiction. "28
Figured Discourse
It is difficult to show figured discourse at work because the hidden message is embedded in culture and allusion--a matter of historically informed specula- tion at such a distance. 29 What is communicated through figured discourse is, most often, a stance, attitude, or posture, rather than a full-fledged argument (although there are examples of these from the imperial period). In the cere- monial contexts where Greek rhetors made their appearances, figured discourse runs against the grain of smooth, showy oratorical performance: it is the grain of sand in the oyster, the residue left echoing in the minds of the auditors-- Roman, Greek, and all the others listening at such events--the uncomfort- able or enlivening, depending on one's position, sense that all is not well in the political order.
The most characteristic examples are drawn from references to classical Greek mythology and literature. The prick comes when the educated listener, who brings a deep familiarity with conventional impressions of characters and stories from Homer, the tragedians, and Greek mythology more gener- ally, hears a reference that subtly recasts the valences of the paideia. Consider the city encomium of Libanius (314-93), one of the imperial period's most prolific Greek rhetors: a native of Antioch, trained in Athens, called to serve in Constantinople by imperial command, and eventually allowed to return to his beloved city on the Orontes River as the official Sophist of the city. 30 The history of Libanius's relationship with imperial power is too complex to relate in detail here, but a few touch points will sketch a sense of the perilous balance between violence and coercion, on the one hand, and beneficence, on the other, within which Greek rhetors were held. When he was born in 314, Libanius's family was recovering from a disastrous punishment inflicted upon it a decade earlier "by the intemperate wrath" of the emperor Dioclet- ian. When he returned to Antioch in 354, the entire city council, including Libanius's uncle, had been arrested by the Roman prefect whose policies had provoked riots. This excessive prefect was soon replaced by a friendly and effec- tive one, and at the time of the composition of the "Antiochikos," Libanius was safe, respected, and soon to enjoy a brief period of stimulating exchange with the emperor Julian. 31 From these few details in a long and eventful life, the extreme vicissitudes of fortune, along with the actual impact, for good or ill, of public rhetoric at this time will become clearer.
What did empire mean to the Greek Sophists? Protection, employment, awe, threat, and the way things were. What was it possible for a Greek to say in the face of Roman imperial power? Libanius delivered this speech in 356 on the occasion of an Olympic games in the middle of a long career and at a
The Prospects for the Public Work of Rhetoric 291
hopeful moment in the course of his relations with emperors--on the eve of the accession of Julian to the highest office. Two-thirds of the way through a richly detailed description of the history and physical beauties of this thriv- ing metropolis, Libanius mentions the existence of Rome almost as an aside. When the "will of heaven" decreed that post-Alexandrian rulers of Antioch were to be replaced and the world was "girt with the golden chain of Rome" (? 129), the transfer of power occurred with no violence or rancor, Libanius claims, and Romans simply added their customs to existing ones. 32 To a con- temporary reader, Libanius sounds happily reconciled to the conditions of empire. If there are some constraints implied by the figure of a chain, mate- rial compensations, beauty, and technical artistry weigh against them, espe- cially coming from a Greek intellectual who appeared to be faring reasonably well under imperial rule. 33 But educated listeners would hear more. The Greek expression "chain of gold" from the Homeric dialect is rare, used by Zeus in Iliad, Book 8, in a violent threat to the other Olympian gods. Any who vio- lated Zeus's order would be snatched up, dangled by this golden cable, and then hurled "down to the murk of Tartarus" (l. 15). Zeus makes the threat to show "how far I tower over the gods, I tower over men" (ll. 20-31). 34 If the citizens of the lovely and prosperous Antioch were lulled through the first hun- dred paragraphs of Libanius's oration to feel that Rome was far away, they are wrenched back through this reference to a vision of a violent power struggle-- one that only the princeps, the first among them, will win. With the ferocious power of the empire, he can drag even its most privileged members, "and the earth . . . and sea, all together," up with a golden cable and leave them dan- gling in midair.
Romans had a stake in appearing and acting in moderate ways. The ideol- ogy of benevolence at the center of Pax Romana cannot be sustained in com- plete contradiction, as the recent removal of the violent prefect demonstrated. The city Sophist's role required simultaneously speaking to his fellow Anti- ochenes and keeping the content of this ideology present to the mind and vision of the Roman rulers, both in its negative and positive aspects. Elsewhere in the speech, Libanius directly and eloquently defends practices of civic rhet- orical deliberation (? 139-49), and thus we see the oscillation between parrhe^sia and figured discourse. The council, Libanius asserts, has the wisdom and ora- torical ability of a group of Sophists in their prime, and "this ability compels the governors to live up to their name, but not to go beyond it, and play the tyrant" (? 140). The mastery of deliberative oratory guarantees the independ- ence of the council, providing it with a "magic" even greater than the gover- nors' (? 141). Libanius gives precise instructions to the Roman governor about how to conciliate the local population and succeed: "any governor who wins a fair reputation thinks that he gained the crown of virtue, not because he has overcome insubordination, but because he has gained his praises among free and intelligent men" (? 143). Finally, the rhetor names the art of unconcealment
292 Susan C. Jarratt
specifically: "It is not a case that some may speak and others may not; there is a freedom of speech in which all share" (? 145). 35 And here we rotate back into the realm of the wished-for or projected state of affairs.
Codes
How might this very brief glimpse at postclassical Greek rhetoric give aid or inspiration to twenty-first-century public rhetors? In what ways would it pre- figure their efforts, suggesting points of emphasis for future practice? First, the situation of the Greek rhetors might suggest the importance of spending more time and attention on ways of addressing those in power and mixed publics in mutually recognizable terms. As academics, many of us are more comfortable as polemicists or critics, or in many public settings, as enablers of the underdeveloped rhetorics of the disenfranchised. Perhaps it is time to cultivate the rhetorical arts of the polis-diplomate of the twenty-first century, seeking out the codes that travel across power and class differentials within whatever geographies are available.
Second, we find in the conjunction of postclassical and postmodern rhet- orics a confirmation of "free speech" as a stance or posture rather than a reve- lation of the truth itself. Sophistic tactics combine parrhe^sia with the arts of irony, allusion, and generic experimentation, tactics at present more at home in electronic media than print or face-to-face contexts both in and out of school. 36 Rhetoric and writing in twentieth-century U. S. schools have most commonly occupied the domains of the pragmatic and instrumental, the earnest and straightforward, the clear and self-present. We specialize in the arts of free speech: of rational argument, logic, clear thinking. No doubt these arts, in all their complexity and power, should remain a strong emphasis for rhetoric studies. Perhaps the twist in the postmodern paideia has to do with how we represent their status and effects, their place within the poikilos nature--the pied, multicolored, mottled, intricate, changeful, unstable, wily ways--of twenty-first-century communications. Reimagining pedagogical mixes of instrumental and literary is clearly not a call to set the aside logos, nor would it entail the wholesale adoption of an ancient curriculum. 37 In the work of public rhetoric of this volume, the logos is often embedded within other genres: the academic conference (Condit), the meeting (Grabill), and the online exchange (Cushman). As pedagogues, public works rhetors, like their predecessors, construct practice sessions: mock scenarios in which students with disabilities can invent terminologies for their conditions and experi- ment with and restructure their emotional stances (Flower). Coogan's literacy group works in expressive modes--producing stories in recognizably literary forms--to which publics responded powerfully.
The 2008 presidential campaign gives us a striking example of how far we have to go--we academics and we citizens--in mastering the codes of free speech and figured discourse. Barack Obama's success as a memoirist prior to
The Prospects for the Public Work of Rhetoric 293
his candidacy for the highest office made front-page news in an article titled "The Story of Obama, Written by Obama.
" Obama's self-presentation in Dreams from my Father, writes Janny Scott, "leaves an impression of candidness and authenticity that gives it much of its power. " The article goes on to quote Stanford English professor Arnold Rampersad, author of a biography of Ralph Ellison: "The book is so literary. . . . It is so full of clever tricks--inventions for literary effect--that I was taken aback, even astonished. But make no mistake, these are simply the tricks that art trades in, and out of these tricks is sup- posed to come our realization of truth. "38 The journalist gets what the English professor finds "astonishing": that truth is realized though persuasive discourse.
Of the many truths realized by the public rhetors in this volume, I close by nominating as the most vividly hopeful the Richmond teens' "sanctuary" mural (see this book's dust jacket). A powerful fusion of word and image that becomes a public argument, this act of fabrication reminded me, in all of its colorful, courageous improbability, of the evocations of peace and harmony echoing through Greek rhetoric under empire. 39 Publics have always been constructed in the absence of and hope for an ideal. With their act of fabri- cation, the teens create a public space of appearance, asserting their "reality" in Arendt's sense, and their hope: "Power is actualized only where word and deed have not parted company, where words are not empty and deeds not brutal. "40
Notes
1. Arendt, Human Condition, 198.
2. See Royster, "Disciplinary Landscape," on traditions.
3. Ignatieff, "Burden," 22.
4. Foster, "Rediscovery," 2-3.
5. Kagan, Schmitt, and Donnelly, "Rebuilding," 1, iv. See also Hartnett and Stengrim,
Globalization, 1-39.
6. Mendelsohn, "Theatres," 79-84.
7. Such a direction could also be understood as the historical equivalent of anthro-
pology's turn toward "studying up. " See Nader, "Up the Anthropologist," 284-311.
8. Hartnett and Stengrim, Globalization, 267-92.
9. San Francisco Chronicle, February 19, 2003. Bush made these informal remarks in
reference to worldwide protests the day before in conversation with reporters after an unrelated event at the White House. Numerous national and international newspapers quoted the remarks on February 19, 2003.
10. Haussamen, "Editorial. " For a longer history, see Wines, "Ethics Violations. "
11. Smith and Low, Introduction, 1-16. See also Hauser, Vernacular Voices, 1-30.
12. See recent studies by Goldhill, Erotic Edge, 1-28; Pernot, Rhetoric, 128-201; and
Whitmarsh, Greek Literature, 1-38, for general discussions of this group, including the problematic nature of the "Second Sophistic" label, and for an extensive bibliography. All subsequent dates will be in the Common Era unless specified.
13. Carolyn Miller's chapter in this volume provides an illuminating and carefully documented discussion of "concealment" as a transhistorical feature of rhetorical practice. The question here concerns the choice of tactics under specific historical and material circumstances.
294 Susan C. Jarratt
14. Brown, Power and Persuasion, 51-52. 15. Konstan, Emotions, 31.
16. Foucault, Fearless Speech, 12.
17. Connolly, "Virile Tongues," 86.
18. Ahl, "Art of Safe Criticism," 184, 203. 19. Foucault, Fearless Speech, 22.
20. See, for example, Jarratt, "George W. Bush. " 21. Philostratus, Lives, 21.
22. For accounts of the reigns of the two emperors who became the epitomes of vio- lent misrule, see Suetonius, Twelve Caesars, 213-46, 299-314.
23. Dio Chrysostom, "Kingship Discourses. "
24. On the literal level, the comment may be taken to refer to language differences, although translator Wilmer Cave Wright comments "that Trajan understood Greek is probable. " Philostratus, Lives, 20-21 n. 5. The best education was in Attic Greek, but Roman public life and legal actions were conducted in Latin, which not all of the Greek intelligentsia deigned to learn. It is assumed that were many vernacular languages spo- ken in the empire, although very few written records remain. Among them would have been demotic Greek, Celtic, Coptic, Punic, Aramaic, Syriac, and numerous others. On this topic, see Brunt, Roman Imperial Themes, 277-80, for an overview and bibliography.
25. See Whitmarsh, Greek Literature, 181-246.
26. Brunt, Roman Imperial Themes, 268.
27. See Whitmarsh, Greek Literature, 207, 246. Whitemarsh argues the unlikelihood
that any of these orations were presented to Trajan. Within Whitmarsh's theoretical paradigm, searching for extratextual contexts and effects dooms the historian/critic to an "expressive-realist" methodology (see 20-38). His emphasis on the textuality of sec- ond sophistic rhetoric is accompanied by a severely diminished recognition of material circumstances. In my view, exile is more than a trope.
28. Rose, "Cicero," 367. See also Poulakos, Speaking, 4, on the political orientation of Isocrates' rhetoric in the classical era.
29. For a reading of figured discourse in Anna Comnena's Byzantine era history, Alex- iad, see Quandahl and Jarratt, "'To Recall Him,'" 301-35.
30. Too late to fall under Philostratus's designation "Second Sophist," Libanius none- theless belongs with them, as he carries on the rhetorical practices of the Greek revival in the Roman East. For background on Libanius, see Libanius, Autobiography; Norman, General Introduction, xi-xviii; Cribiore, School of Libanius, 13-41.
31. Norman, General Introduction, xi-xiii.
32. Libanius, "Oration 11," 31.
33. For Libanius's financial circumstances, see his own extensive Autobiography and
Norman, General Introduction. On Libanius's school, see Cribiore, School of Libanius, 111-73.
34. Homer, Iliad, "Book 8," 231-50. (Fagles translates the key term as "cable. ")
35. Libanius, "Oration 11," 34-36.
36. See Fishman et al. , "Performing Writing," 224-52, on student performance within
the academic sphere.
37. See Brady, "Review," 70-81, for a review of new books on composition and literature. 38. Scott, "Story of Obama," 22 (emphasis added).
39. See, for example, Aristides' encomium of Rome. Oliver, "Ruling Power," 901-3. See
George, "From Analysis to Design," 11-39, on visual design as argument. 40. Arendt, Human Condition, 199-200.
The Prospects for the Public Work of Rhetoric 295
Works Cited
Ahl, Frederick. "The Art of Safe Criticism in Greece and Rome. " American Journal of Philology 105 (1984): 174-208.
Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. Brady, Laura. "Review: Retelling the Composition-Literature Story. " College English 71
(2008): 70-81.
Brown, Peter. Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Toward a Christian Empire. Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1992.
Brunt, P. A. Roman Imperial Themes. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.
Connolly, Jill. "Virile Tongues: Rhetoric and Masculinity. " In A Companion to Roman
Rhetoric, edited by William Dominik and Jon Hall, 83-97. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007. Cribiore, Raffaella. The School of Libanius in Late Antique Antioch. Princeton, N. J. : Prince-
ton University Press, 2007.
Dio Chrysostom. Vol. 1. Translated by J. W. Cohoon. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1949.
Fishman, Jenn, et al. "Performing Writing, Performing Literacy. " College Composition and
Communication 52 (2005): 224-52.
Foster, John Bellamy. "The Rediscovery of Imperialism. " Monthly Review 54, no. 6 (2002):
1-16.
Foucault, Michel. Fearless Speech. Edited by Joseph Pearson. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e),
2001.
George, Diana. "From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of
Writing. " College Composition and Communication 54 (2002): 11-39.
Goldhill, Simon. "The Erotic Eye: Visual Stimulation and Cultural Conflict. " In Being
Greek under Rome, 154-94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Gusterson, Hugh. "Up Revisited. " Political and Legal Anthropology Review 20 (1997):
114-19.
Hartnett, Stephen, and Laura Ann Stengrim. Globalization and Empire: The U. S. Invasion
of Iraq, Free Markets, and the Twilight of Democracy. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama
Press, 2006.
Hauser, Gerard A. Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres. Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1999.
Haussmen, Heath. "Editorial: Ethics Violations Need Real Investigations. " Citizens for
Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. http://www. crewsmostcorrupt. org/node/413
(accessed September 12, 2008).
Homer. The Iliad. Translated by Robert Fagles. New York: Viking, 1990.
Ignatieff, Michael. "The Burden. " New York Times Magazine, January 5, 2003, 22-27, 50,
53-54.
Jarratt, Susan C. "George W. Bush, 'Graduation Speech at West Point. '" Voices of Democ-
racy Project. http://www. voicesofdemocracy. com/ (accessed June 1, 2002).
August 31, 2008).
? The Prospects for the Public Work of Rhetoric
A Coda on Codes
Susan C. Jarratt
The stimulating essays in this book display rhetorics for our times: publics variously concrete and elusive, interventions at times tentative, of mixed suc- cess, but full of energy. Even the most vividly present settings become publics differently according to the rhetorical order, tasks, and understanding brought to bear on them (Coogan). For guidance, the authors reach back into the eighteenth-century public as Habermas envisioned it--"a collaborative search for the common good"--but also look forward, beyond the hesitations of the Wingspread participants, into a newly realized array of millennial publics. The "public workers" of this volume find a polis, as Hannah Arendt predicted: in "the organization of the people as it arises out of acting and speaking to- gether . . . its true space [lying] between people living together for this pur- pose, no matter where they happen to be. "1 A final word in response to these essays must work against finality in an effort to keep alive their activity, their fraught yet hopeful qualities: to the manifold and variegated qualities of the public works they record. Although there are oppositions and advocacies here, the dominant themes are qualification, principled hesitation, a stepping back from the reassuring rhetorics of pro, con, and happy compromise.
Like the participants in the Wingspread Conference of the 1960s, twenty- first-century public rhetoricians are made somewhat uneasy by the rhetorics of our times. Ackerman and Coogan identify this phenomenon as a problem of history: "What made Becker uneasy--what makes all of us uneasy--were publics that could not be contained by (or easily explained by) the rhetorical tradition, either in substance, style or medium. " Traditions must be made anew, and new histories--"lost geographies"--are called forth by contempo- rary problems. 2 Urging readers to envision a postmodern paideia, the editors invite rhetoric's history in, not as an obligatory grounding or an answer to a dilemma but as a resource. Rather than clarifying through a general enlight- enment, postmodern rhetorical history might resort to refraction: to gather
284 Susan C. Jarratt
diffuse sources from the present and angle them through the lens of the "prior" with the hope of sparking the imaginations of public rhetoric workers in the field, in the way that Coogan makes sophistic rhetoric over into a counter- public practice for Richmond teens. What are the rhetorical arts needful in this time, one in which "free-speech" and rational argument--or at least the abil- ity to speak across ideological and political divides--seem to some to have lost force? Is there something other, or something more to be learned from pre- modern rhetorics? To shift the figure, might some newer historical narratives serve not as a stash but a font?
According to Bruner, "one way we can do the public work of rhetoric is by mapping the distance between history and memory, understanding how far those imaginaries are from historical fact, and with what consequence. " Bruner refers to large-scale public memories of war, but we might apply his recommendation to rhetoric's histories and to ancient political history more generally. Changes in our own geopolitical realities may make it less and less possible to overlook (or to treat with a bland acceptance) the fact that the dominant ancient rhetorical cultures, even during the democracy and the republic, operated through the power of empire.
Empire
"What word but 'empire,'" writes Michael Ignatieff in a New York Times Maga- zine article of January 2003, "describes the awesome thing that America is becoming? "--this on the eve of the invasion of Iraq. 3 With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the growth of multinational corporations, positive uses of this term begin to appear in middle-of-the-road political science journals and media outlets such as Foreign Affairs, Harvard Review, and the Wall Street Journal. 4 More pointed comparisons with Pax Romana, the Roman peace, can be found in political strategy statements produced by the Defense Department under George H. W. Bush and in the report of The Project for the New American Cen- tury, a nonprofit educational organization, used as a basis for Condoleezza Rice's 2001 National Security Strategy statement. The project's report, titled "Rebuilding America's Defenses," overtly argues that the United States, as the "world's most preeminent power," should resolve to "shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests. " Despite the long-standing priorities of containment and deterrence, these documents openly employ a rhetoric of empire, referring to a global Pax Americana and "American peace" without irony 5
In those years, we lived in a Pax Americana run by a government taking its cues from classical scholars in shaping its foreign policy. Daniel Mendel- sohn, in his brilliant New Yorker reviews of new publications in ancient Greek history and literature, points out, for example, the "tendentious" angles of vision in a new history of the Peloponnesian war by Donald Kagan, coauthor of the strategy statement mentioned above, and in Victor Davis Hanson's works
The Prospects for the Public Work of Rhetoric 285
on Greek military strategy, recommended by Vice President Cheney to his staff during the 2001 war in Afghanistan. 6 These are the intellectuals who have guided the world's newest empire through the first, devastating decade of the new millennium. Some rhetors here are working very locally, in the geogra- phies of community or neighborhood, but sometimes with a reach into the geographies of empire (for example, Cushman with the victims of nineteenth- century U. S. internal imperialism against American Indians; Grabill against the pressures driving international shipping). Many of the rhetors in this vol- ume choose to work for and with disenfranchised groups, helping them to find and hone words that will give them power, working across class and pro- fessional space to put rhetorical expertise to work. The strength of the volume lies in its insistence on a dialogue among history (C. Miller), theory, analysis, and practical community work. Yet another direction we might take with a postmodern paideia would turn toward those in power, asking what are the networks of affiliation, the rhetorics of space, and rhetorical strategies that will enable us to move the emperors of our own era? 7
This is not an easy task. What can be done rhetorically in our times, diffi- cult times for rhetoric, when an Enlightenment dream of democracy is no longer recognizable, let alone sustainable (Cintron): a "twilight of democ- racy"? 8 What can be done rhetorically when the forces of "conspiracy" (Ack- erman and Coogan) do not listen to reason? "Democracy is a beautiful thing," says George W. Bush in February 2003, as millions of protesters worldwide urged caution on the eve of the attack of Iraq. 9 The beauty lies in the freedom to demonstrate, but the obligation of those in power to listen, engage, and respond has fallen into disuse. The range of opinions reaching into and influ- encing the world's most powerful ruler has narrowed dramatically, and the multitude of ethics violations charged against legislators brings home the "inartistic" force brought to bear by corporations and heavily underwritten interest groups. 10 And yet as Ackerman and Coogan insist, scholars in The Public Work of Rhetoric "reject the idea that public life is dead, that it has been stripped of agitation, assembly, and deliberation. " They create and call upon poie^sis for the production of thick publics (Bruner), recognize rhetorical agency as protean and promiscuous (Campbell), and in so doing, call forth a newly imagined rhetorical history to underwrite them. If Bush calls democracy "beautiful," rhetoricians have the option to take him at his word, returning to beauty, wonder, and fantasy as weapons, not of mass distraction, but of a new political imagination.
"Lost Geographies" of Public Life
The editors of this volume, citing Neil Smith and Setha Low, cast the problem of publics into a wider space than any preexisting agora or ekklesia. 11 Histories of rhetoric are replete with lost geographies, and not only those pockets of populations excluded from public life whose words, in whatever forms they
286 Susan C. Jarratt
could take, are waiting to be retrieved. The culturally Greek intelligentsia from the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire inhabited one of those geogra- phies. Until recently encased within a narrative of decline into "literariness," scholars have begun to reconsider this period in the last decade or so, arriv- ing at a dramatic counterstatement to centuries-old historiography: that pub- lic rhetoric did not die out in the era of the Roman Empire. Opportunities for imagining, performing, and arguing for collective good for subjects of empire did not disappear but persisted--coded within an array of unfamiliar genres. 12
The intersections of geography, language, and cultural practices for these "Greeks" differs decidedly from the famous autochthony of classical Athens. Tied neither to birthplace nor ancestry--that is, in the view of most critics, not to be understood as an "ethnicity"--Greek identity was a cultural acqui- sition on the part of a select group of elite men, often Roman citizens, closely identified with their provincial cities in the Near East. Overlooked or de- emphasized in most treatments of these rhetors is a recognition that their performances enabled them to take on the responsibilities of the public in- tellectual on behalf of imperial subjects in extremely complex, multilayered speaking situations. Adopting the stance of Greek rhetor usually signaled an alienation from Roman power but not exactly subjection; it was a claim for prominence in a stratified and competitive social world as well as a position from which to act as critic and adviser to the indigenous power brokers of a province, as well as to the Roman governor and, on occasion, emperor. Among the remnants they mined resided the memory of discourses of democratic deliberation with its attendant critique of tyranny.
Free Speech: Practice, Politics, Posture?
To speak openly and truthfully to those in power or to cloak your ideas and opinions in artful allusions: these were the terms of a rhetorical debate during a period when arbitrary violence, in the city itself as well as in the provinces and even against members of the elite classes, was a constant possibility. 13 As Peter Brown puts it, "a tide of horror lapped close to the feet of all educated persons. "14 From the conquest of Philip of Macedon over Greece at the end of democracy, to the imperial sweep of Alexander, to the rise of Rome as a conquering power in the third and second centuries B. C. E. , and finally to the declaration of empire by Augustus in 27 C. E. , public exchange took place in "in the suspicious atmosphere of a court society, where people tend to assume a demeanour conformable to the pleasure of the ruler. "15 Yet the textual tradition in Greek from the very beginning records examples of characters risking violent retribution to break through the censorious barrier to speak uncomfortable truths. Parrhe^sia originated in the classical period, and the recently published 1983 Berkeley lectures by Michel Foucault on its origins and history lay out its distinctive parameters as a rhetorical practice: the free- speaker "make[s] it manifestly clear and obvious that what he says is his own
The Prospects for the Public Work of Rhetoric 287
opinion . . . us[ing] the most direct words and forms of expression he can find. "16 Moreover, this "free-speaker" takes a risk, puts himself or herself in danger, by addressing someone in a position of power. The relationship to the interlocutor is a game, but with risk to only one party: it is a game but also a duty.
The "free-speaker"--parrhe^siastes--was assigned certain attributes in these discourses, a rhetorical posture that translated easily to republican Rome, with its legend and history of heroic challenge to tyranny, and became coded in a fusion of masculinity and national identity: "Rhetorical education was de- signed to instill in Roman boys habits that would make their masculinity lit- erally visible to the world: along with constructing logical arguments, handling narration and interrogation, and creative ways to use words, they learned to stand up straight, look others straight in the eye, gesticulate with grace and authority. "17 As incomplete as a description of Roman rhetorical practice and unsustainable as this posture was, it nonetheless constituted one of the layers of (always multiply mediated) cultural assumption under which Greek rhetors in the provincial East had to work.
"Free speech" lies at the heart of a rhetoric invented in classical Athens-- an ideology at least partially realized in practice--with its courts and delibera- tive assemblies. It is arguably the rhetoric that undergirds most contemporary educational rationales for courses in writing: the facility with language that enables public participation and assures the testing of ideas and policies in democratic forums. The persona most likely to deliver this speech is upright, honest, and straightforward, speaking earnestly in his or her own voice with nothing to hide. What Foucault suggests only briefly, but what Carolyn Miller discusses here for rhetoric more generally, and second sophistic rhetors ex- ploited creatively is "free speech" as itself a figure, a stance, oscillating in rela- tion to its other: "figured discourse. " Cloaking one's criticism in metaphors, or, even better, lodging it within allusions to Greek history, myth, and litera- ture, was not only a safer path for the Greek rhetor but sometimes more effec- tive because more impressive and artful. Frederick Ahl points out, "Blunt speech gives way to oblique speech in situations where the speaker is (or feels) threatened or unsure of his audience. Many ancient poets, and all ancient rhetorical theorists, lived when overt criticism of the ruling powers was dan- gerous. They sensed the need for obliqueness. But they also sensed the greater persuasiveness of oblique suggestion. " He goes on to observe that "rhetorical theorists wanted to train students not in how to achieve martyrdom, which requires no special education, but in how to deal successfully with the pow- erful and even shape and direct their power. "18 A successfully "figured" mes- sage gives the listener--a ruler, but also the others present--the pleasure of solving a mystery, of realizing the power of their common education: the paideia shared by Roman, Greek, and provincial elites alike. For Foucault, "the touchstone of the good ruler is his ability to play the parrhe^siatic game. "19
288 Susan C. Jarratt
Which "rulers"--power brokers--in our contemporary scene are willing to play such a game? In fact, the rhetorical, and thus political, success of George W. Bush in some part lay in his claim not to play the game of knowing, to be outside any paideia, to be the ignorant and thus innocent rustic operating through a kind of folk knowledge. A postmodern paideia demands the ability not only to take up stances on the part of public rhetors but to read the pos- tures of those in power and, most important, to engage them, or to play their games, or to play some other game that is recognizable across lines of power. That would be the definition of a paideia--a common cultural language that can be taken up by many. When progressive (or "left") journalism and schol- arship engages with the rhetorics of the powerful, the effect is most often a critique that marks difference. I have certainly engaged in such projects my- self. 20 We create thereby a standoff of parrhe^siastics, or worse, isolate ourselves like philosophers during the period of the Roman Empire: hermetic social critics who are not involved in or dirtied by these rhetorical/power games. Practicing rhetoric across the boundary of university and community, say Ackerman and Coogan, requires "a shedding of academic adornments, a dif- ferent professional disposition. " The public works rhetorician of the twenty- first century sheds the beard, robes, hermetic habits, and isolationist disdain of the philosopher of the imperial era, most often moving down the ladder of public legitimacy and enfranchisement. Is it possible to imagine moving in the other direction? One scene that comes to mind from the collection here is Grabill's conversation with the mayor at a party. Just imagine--
Dispositions
A fanciful anecdote recorded by Philostratus in his third-century Lives of the Sophists imagines the emperor Trajan seating the Sophist Dio (called Chrysos- tom, or Golden-Mouthed) by his side on the golden chariot in which he rides in triumphal processions, turning to him and saying, "I don't understand what you say but I love you as I love myself. "21 This scene, no doubt apocry- phal, dramatizes a relationship between rhetor and emperor organized around patronage and affiliation. Trajan, from a long-established Roman family that immigrated to Spain (a fully Romanized province) in his grandfather's time, came up through the army and was "adopted" by the emperor Nerva in 97 and chosen to succeed him without struggle in 98. Trajan stood as the first in a sequence of "good" emperors, following the violent and turbulent realms of Domitian and Nero before him. 22 He was a mild-tempered, generous, and judicious ruler who enacted a number of policies benefiting children and utilitarian building projects. He achieved more renown and popular goodwill, however, for his military conquest of Dacia and the elaborate gladiatorial games following thereon. He died in 117 returning from an attack on Parthi- ans in Armenia, an attempt to extend the eastern reach of the empire.
The Prospects for the Public Work of Rhetoric 289
Dio (40-110 or 120), a native of Prusa (now Bursa, on the Aegean coast of Turkey), chief city in the province of Bithynia, was born to wealthy parents who had been granted Roman citizenship. He was provided with a first-rate Greek education and, like many of the figures in this group, cultivated close relationships with powerful Romans, including the emperor Vespasian early in his career. Dio's free speaking, however, provoked the ire of Domitian, who exiled him from his native province and from Italy in 82. He was returned under Nerva in 96, and then formed a close relationship with Trajan, to whom he may have addressed his four discourses on kingship near the end of the century. 23
Why, in this made-up story, does the emperor say he does not understand what the Sophist says? 24 On one interpretation, we can note the importance of the Sophist's proximity that may override any particular position or piece of advice he may be offering; "love" or philia--manly friendship, is what mat- ters in the networks of power relations between rhetor and emperor. 25 On the level of rhetoric, the anecdote raises the question of how communication operated across cultural and power differences: not only what it was and was not possible to say, but how it was possible to be heard. In fact, local elites were essential to the management of the empire: "Everywhere it was the Roman policy to win over, and to enfranchise, the local leaders. "26 In the East, Roman rule maintained existing civic institutions and relied on the indigenous property-owners for crucial operations of the city.
So from the sophist's perspective, being heard and understood mattered a great deal, even though the historical distance and state of the archival record make linking any one sophistic discourse to a specific audience or outcome very difficult. 27 But, in an odd way, this circumstance provides a provocative mirror of the theoretical commitments in this volume in the adoption of a theory of "publics" over against "audience. " Public rhetors are concerned with the circulation of discourse--its call, its constituents, and the climate it cre- ates. These we can establish for the second sophistic, and they are, in many cases, powerfully oriented toward a vision of the polis as a sustaining form of human organization: the Greek concept and practice taken up--and blown up--by the Romans. Whether or not Trajan was influenced by Dio or by Pliny, a Roman of the same era who composed an extensive panegyric to the em- peror, at points arguing for the exercise of good government, the emperor could not have imagined or enacted his benevolent policies in the absence of a discourse outlining and supporting such actions. This idea could also be understood in terms of legitimation. The Greek rhetors played a role, literally, in keeping alive the imagination and value of democratic rule, on the one hand, and the condemnation of tyrannical imperial behavior, on the other. What Peter W. Rose identifies as the ideological work of Cicero's oratorical arguments is perhaps even more true of the epideictic discourses of the Greek
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rhetors: "An oration does more than propose a specific course of action: its persuasive function is aimed at constructing a vision of the real. . . . This vision of the real is the oration's enabling fiction. "28
Figured Discourse
It is difficult to show figured discourse at work because the hidden message is embedded in culture and allusion--a matter of historically informed specula- tion at such a distance. 29 What is communicated through figured discourse is, most often, a stance, attitude, or posture, rather than a full-fledged argument (although there are examples of these from the imperial period). In the cere- monial contexts where Greek rhetors made their appearances, figured discourse runs against the grain of smooth, showy oratorical performance: it is the grain of sand in the oyster, the residue left echoing in the minds of the auditors-- Roman, Greek, and all the others listening at such events--the uncomfort- able or enlivening, depending on one's position, sense that all is not well in the political order.
The most characteristic examples are drawn from references to classical Greek mythology and literature. The prick comes when the educated listener, who brings a deep familiarity with conventional impressions of characters and stories from Homer, the tragedians, and Greek mythology more gener- ally, hears a reference that subtly recasts the valences of the paideia. Consider the city encomium of Libanius (314-93), one of the imperial period's most prolific Greek rhetors: a native of Antioch, trained in Athens, called to serve in Constantinople by imperial command, and eventually allowed to return to his beloved city on the Orontes River as the official Sophist of the city. 30 The history of Libanius's relationship with imperial power is too complex to relate in detail here, but a few touch points will sketch a sense of the perilous balance between violence and coercion, on the one hand, and beneficence, on the other, within which Greek rhetors were held. When he was born in 314, Libanius's family was recovering from a disastrous punishment inflicted upon it a decade earlier "by the intemperate wrath" of the emperor Dioclet- ian. When he returned to Antioch in 354, the entire city council, including Libanius's uncle, had been arrested by the Roman prefect whose policies had provoked riots. This excessive prefect was soon replaced by a friendly and effec- tive one, and at the time of the composition of the "Antiochikos," Libanius was safe, respected, and soon to enjoy a brief period of stimulating exchange with the emperor Julian. 31 From these few details in a long and eventful life, the extreme vicissitudes of fortune, along with the actual impact, for good or ill, of public rhetoric at this time will become clearer.
What did empire mean to the Greek Sophists? Protection, employment, awe, threat, and the way things were. What was it possible for a Greek to say in the face of Roman imperial power? Libanius delivered this speech in 356 on the occasion of an Olympic games in the middle of a long career and at a
The Prospects for the Public Work of Rhetoric 291
hopeful moment in the course of his relations with emperors--on the eve of the accession of Julian to the highest office. Two-thirds of the way through a richly detailed description of the history and physical beauties of this thriv- ing metropolis, Libanius mentions the existence of Rome almost as an aside. When the "will of heaven" decreed that post-Alexandrian rulers of Antioch were to be replaced and the world was "girt with the golden chain of Rome" (? 129), the transfer of power occurred with no violence or rancor, Libanius claims, and Romans simply added their customs to existing ones. 32 To a con- temporary reader, Libanius sounds happily reconciled to the conditions of empire. If there are some constraints implied by the figure of a chain, mate- rial compensations, beauty, and technical artistry weigh against them, espe- cially coming from a Greek intellectual who appeared to be faring reasonably well under imperial rule. 33 But educated listeners would hear more. The Greek expression "chain of gold" from the Homeric dialect is rare, used by Zeus in Iliad, Book 8, in a violent threat to the other Olympian gods. Any who vio- lated Zeus's order would be snatched up, dangled by this golden cable, and then hurled "down to the murk of Tartarus" (l. 15). Zeus makes the threat to show "how far I tower over the gods, I tower over men" (ll. 20-31). 34 If the citizens of the lovely and prosperous Antioch were lulled through the first hun- dred paragraphs of Libanius's oration to feel that Rome was far away, they are wrenched back through this reference to a vision of a violent power struggle-- one that only the princeps, the first among them, will win. With the ferocious power of the empire, he can drag even its most privileged members, "and the earth . . . and sea, all together," up with a golden cable and leave them dan- gling in midair.
Romans had a stake in appearing and acting in moderate ways. The ideol- ogy of benevolence at the center of Pax Romana cannot be sustained in com- plete contradiction, as the recent removal of the violent prefect demonstrated. The city Sophist's role required simultaneously speaking to his fellow Anti- ochenes and keeping the content of this ideology present to the mind and vision of the Roman rulers, both in its negative and positive aspects. Elsewhere in the speech, Libanius directly and eloquently defends practices of civic rhet- orical deliberation (? 139-49), and thus we see the oscillation between parrhe^sia and figured discourse. The council, Libanius asserts, has the wisdom and ora- torical ability of a group of Sophists in their prime, and "this ability compels the governors to live up to their name, but not to go beyond it, and play the tyrant" (? 140). The mastery of deliberative oratory guarantees the independ- ence of the council, providing it with a "magic" even greater than the gover- nors' (? 141). Libanius gives precise instructions to the Roman governor about how to conciliate the local population and succeed: "any governor who wins a fair reputation thinks that he gained the crown of virtue, not because he has overcome insubordination, but because he has gained his praises among free and intelligent men" (? 143). Finally, the rhetor names the art of unconcealment
292 Susan C. Jarratt
specifically: "It is not a case that some may speak and others may not; there is a freedom of speech in which all share" (? 145). 35 And here we rotate back into the realm of the wished-for or projected state of affairs.
Codes
How might this very brief glimpse at postclassical Greek rhetoric give aid or inspiration to twenty-first-century public rhetors? In what ways would it pre- figure their efforts, suggesting points of emphasis for future practice? First, the situation of the Greek rhetors might suggest the importance of spending more time and attention on ways of addressing those in power and mixed publics in mutually recognizable terms. As academics, many of us are more comfortable as polemicists or critics, or in many public settings, as enablers of the underdeveloped rhetorics of the disenfranchised. Perhaps it is time to cultivate the rhetorical arts of the polis-diplomate of the twenty-first century, seeking out the codes that travel across power and class differentials within whatever geographies are available.
Second, we find in the conjunction of postclassical and postmodern rhet- orics a confirmation of "free speech" as a stance or posture rather than a reve- lation of the truth itself. Sophistic tactics combine parrhe^sia with the arts of irony, allusion, and generic experimentation, tactics at present more at home in electronic media than print or face-to-face contexts both in and out of school. 36 Rhetoric and writing in twentieth-century U. S. schools have most commonly occupied the domains of the pragmatic and instrumental, the earnest and straightforward, the clear and self-present. We specialize in the arts of free speech: of rational argument, logic, clear thinking. No doubt these arts, in all their complexity and power, should remain a strong emphasis for rhetoric studies. Perhaps the twist in the postmodern paideia has to do with how we represent their status and effects, their place within the poikilos nature--the pied, multicolored, mottled, intricate, changeful, unstable, wily ways--of twenty-first-century communications. Reimagining pedagogical mixes of instrumental and literary is clearly not a call to set the aside logos, nor would it entail the wholesale adoption of an ancient curriculum. 37 In the work of public rhetoric of this volume, the logos is often embedded within other genres: the academic conference (Condit), the meeting (Grabill), and the online exchange (Cushman). As pedagogues, public works rhetors, like their predecessors, construct practice sessions: mock scenarios in which students with disabilities can invent terminologies for their conditions and experi- ment with and restructure their emotional stances (Flower). Coogan's literacy group works in expressive modes--producing stories in recognizably literary forms--to which publics responded powerfully.
The 2008 presidential campaign gives us a striking example of how far we have to go--we academics and we citizens--in mastering the codes of free speech and figured discourse. Barack Obama's success as a memoirist prior to
The Prospects for the Public Work of Rhetoric 293
his candidacy for the highest office made front-page news in an article titled "The Story of Obama, Written by Obama.
" Obama's self-presentation in Dreams from my Father, writes Janny Scott, "leaves an impression of candidness and authenticity that gives it much of its power. " The article goes on to quote Stanford English professor Arnold Rampersad, author of a biography of Ralph Ellison: "The book is so literary. . . . It is so full of clever tricks--inventions for literary effect--that I was taken aback, even astonished. But make no mistake, these are simply the tricks that art trades in, and out of these tricks is sup- posed to come our realization of truth. "38 The journalist gets what the English professor finds "astonishing": that truth is realized though persuasive discourse.
Of the many truths realized by the public rhetors in this volume, I close by nominating as the most vividly hopeful the Richmond teens' "sanctuary" mural (see this book's dust jacket). A powerful fusion of word and image that becomes a public argument, this act of fabrication reminded me, in all of its colorful, courageous improbability, of the evocations of peace and harmony echoing through Greek rhetoric under empire. 39 Publics have always been constructed in the absence of and hope for an ideal. With their act of fabri- cation, the teens create a public space of appearance, asserting their "reality" in Arendt's sense, and their hope: "Power is actualized only where word and deed have not parted company, where words are not empty and deeds not brutal. "40
Notes
1. Arendt, Human Condition, 198.
2. See Royster, "Disciplinary Landscape," on traditions.
3. Ignatieff, "Burden," 22.
4. Foster, "Rediscovery," 2-3.
5. Kagan, Schmitt, and Donnelly, "Rebuilding," 1, iv. See also Hartnett and Stengrim,
Globalization, 1-39.
6. Mendelsohn, "Theatres," 79-84.
7. Such a direction could also be understood as the historical equivalent of anthro-
pology's turn toward "studying up. " See Nader, "Up the Anthropologist," 284-311.
8. Hartnett and Stengrim, Globalization, 267-92.
9. San Francisco Chronicle, February 19, 2003. Bush made these informal remarks in
reference to worldwide protests the day before in conversation with reporters after an unrelated event at the White House. Numerous national and international newspapers quoted the remarks on February 19, 2003.
10. Haussamen, "Editorial. " For a longer history, see Wines, "Ethics Violations. "
11. Smith and Low, Introduction, 1-16. See also Hauser, Vernacular Voices, 1-30.
12. See recent studies by Goldhill, Erotic Edge, 1-28; Pernot, Rhetoric, 128-201; and
Whitmarsh, Greek Literature, 1-38, for general discussions of this group, including the problematic nature of the "Second Sophistic" label, and for an extensive bibliography. All subsequent dates will be in the Common Era unless specified.
13. Carolyn Miller's chapter in this volume provides an illuminating and carefully documented discussion of "concealment" as a transhistorical feature of rhetorical practice. The question here concerns the choice of tactics under specific historical and material circumstances.
294 Susan C. Jarratt
14. Brown, Power and Persuasion, 51-52. 15. Konstan, Emotions, 31.
16. Foucault, Fearless Speech, 12.
17. Connolly, "Virile Tongues," 86.
18. Ahl, "Art of Safe Criticism," 184, 203. 19. Foucault, Fearless Speech, 22.
20. See, for example, Jarratt, "George W. Bush. " 21. Philostratus, Lives, 21.
22. For accounts of the reigns of the two emperors who became the epitomes of vio- lent misrule, see Suetonius, Twelve Caesars, 213-46, 299-314.
23. Dio Chrysostom, "Kingship Discourses. "
24. On the literal level, the comment may be taken to refer to language differences, although translator Wilmer Cave Wright comments "that Trajan understood Greek is probable. " Philostratus, Lives, 20-21 n. 5. The best education was in Attic Greek, but Roman public life and legal actions were conducted in Latin, which not all of the Greek intelligentsia deigned to learn. It is assumed that were many vernacular languages spo- ken in the empire, although very few written records remain. Among them would have been demotic Greek, Celtic, Coptic, Punic, Aramaic, Syriac, and numerous others. On this topic, see Brunt, Roman Imperial Themes, 277-80, for an overview and bibliography.
25. See Whitmarsh, Greek Literature, 181-246.
26. Brunt, Roman Imperial Themes, 268.
27. See Whitmarsh, Greek Literature, 207, 246. Whitemarsh argues the unlikelihood
that any of these orations were presented to Trajan. Within Whitmarsh's theoretical paradigm, searching for extratextual contexts and effects dooms the historian/critic to an "expressive-realist" methodology (see 20-38). His emphasis on the textuality of sec- ond sophistic rhetoric is accompanied by a severely diminished recognition of material circumstances. In my view, exile is more than a trope.
28. Rose, "Cicero," 367. See also Poulakos, Speaking, 4, on the political orientation of Isocrates' rhetoric in the classical era.
29. For a reading of figured discourse in Anna Comnena's Byzantine era history, Alex- iad, see Quandahl and Jarratt, "'To Recall Him,'" 301-35.
30. Too late to fall under Philostratus's designation "Second Sophist," Libanius none- theless belongs with them, as he carries on the rhetorical practices of the Greek revival in the Roman East. For background on Libanius, see Libanius, Autobiography; Norman, General Introduction, xi-xviii; Cribiore, School of Libanius, 13-41.
31. Norman, General Introduction, xi-xiii.
32. Libanius, "Oration 11," 31.
33. For Libanius's financial circumstances, see his own extensive Autobiography and
Norman, General Introduction. On Libanius's school, see Cribiore, School of Libanius, 111-73.
34. Homer, Iliad, "Book 8," 231-50. (Fagles translates the key term as "cable. ")
35. Libanius, "Oration 11," 34-36.
36. See Fishman et al. , "Performing Writing," 224-52, on student performance within
the academic sphere.
37. See Brady, "Review," 70-81, for a review of new books on composition and literature. 38. Scott, "Story of Obama," 22 (emphasis added).
39. See, for example, Aristides' encomium of Rome. Oliver, "Ruling Power," 901-3. See
George, "From Analysis to Design," 11-39, on visual design as argument. 40. Arendt, Human Condition, 199-200.
The Prospects for the Public Work of Rhetoric 295
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