and the
Hangover
That Won't Go
Away.
Away.
The Public Work of Rhetoric_nodrm
The narrative of the Right Dimensions proposal and its demise can be found in Ruller, "Kent 360," the city manager's blog.
62. Cool Cities Survey Results, "Voice of the Next Generation. " 63. Ruller, "Kent 360. "
94 John M. Ackerman Works Cited
Alexander, Christopher. The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe. Book 1, The Phenomenon of Life; Book Three, A Vision of a Living World. Berkeley, Calif. : Center for Environmental Structure, 2002, 2004.
Allen, John. "Symbolic Economies: The 'Culturization' of Economic Knowledge. " In Cultural Economy: Cultural Analysis and Commercial Life, edited by Paul du Gay and Michael Pryke, 39-58. London: Sage Press, 2002.
American Association of State Colleges and Universities. "American Democracy Proj- ect. " http://www. aascu. org/programs/adp/index. htm (accessed August 10, 2008).
American Enterprise Institute. http://www. aei. org/ (accessed September 4, 2008). Appadurai, Arjun. Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger. Durham,
N. C. : Duke University Press, 2006.
Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Association of American Colleges and Universities. "Civic Engagement. " http://www. aacu
. org/resources/civicengagement/index. cfm (accessed August 10, 2008).
Association of American Universities. "Campus Community Service Directory. " http://
www. aau. edu/about/default. aspx? id=3992 (accessed August 10, 2008).
Attali, Jacques. Millennium: Winners and Losers in the Coming World Order. Translated by Leila Conners and Nathan Gardels. New York: Times Books, Random House, 1991. Banning, Marlia. "Manufacturing Uncertainty: The Politics of Knowledge Production, Emotion, and Public Deliberation in the Contemporary U. S. " Unpublished manu-
script, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2009.
Barnet, Richard J. , and John Cavanaugh. Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the
New World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.
Bennett, Lance W. , and Robert M. Entman. "Democracy in the Public Sphere. " In Medi-
ated Politics: Communication in the Future of Democracy, edited by W. Lance Bennett
and Robert M. Entman, 1-32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Bennett, Tony, Lawrence Grossberg, and Meaghan Morris, eds. New Keywords: A Revised
Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Malden, Mass. : Wiley-Blackwell, 2005.
Be the Change, Inc. "Be the Change. " http://www. bethechangeinc. org (accessed Sep-
tember 28, 2008).
Boyer, Christine. The City of Collective Memory: Its Historical Imagery and Architectural
Entertainments. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1994.
Boyer, Ernest. "The Scholarship of Engagement. " Journal of Public Service and Outreach 1
(1996): 11-20.
Boyte, Harry C. "Against the Current: Developing Civic Agency of Students. " Change,
May/June 2008, 1-11.
------. "A Different Kind of Politics: John Dewey and the Meaning of Citizenship in
the 21st Century. " Dewey Lecture, University of Michigan, November 1, 2002. Brint, Steven, ed. The Future of the City of Intellect: The Changing American University. Stan-
ford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2002.
Campus Compact. "About Campus Compact. " http://www. compact. org/about/ (accessed
August 10, 2008).
Casey, Edward. The Fate of Place: A Phenomenological History. Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1998.
------. "Public Memory in Place and Time. " In Framing Public Memory, edited by Ken-
dall R. Phillips, 17-44. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004.
Rhetorical Engagement in the Cultural Economies of Cities 95
------. Remembering: A Phenomenological Study. Bloomington, Ind. : Indiana University Press, 2000.
Chaput, Kathy. Inside the Teaching Machine: Rhetoric and the Globalization of the U. S. Pub- lic Research University. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2008.
Christopherson, Susan. "Creative Economy Strategies for Small and Medium Size Cities: Options for New York State. " New York Creative Economy Progress Report, Cornell University, 2004. www. nycreativeeconomy. cornell. edu/reports/arts. mgi (accessed Octo- ber 10, 2008).
Columbia University. "ServiceNation Announces Columbia University to Host 'Ser- viceNation Presidential Candidate Forum. '" http://www. columbia. edu/cu/news/ newyorkstories/servicenation. html (accessed September 28, 2008).
Cool Cities Survey Results. "The Voice of the Next Generation. " http://www. kent360 . com/files/University/StudentSurvey. pdf (accessed September 15, 2008).
Crowley, Sharon. Toward a Civil Discourse: Rhetoric and Fundamentalism. Pittsburgh: Uni- versity of Pittsburgh Press, 2006.
Democratic Leadership Council. "The Third Way: Key Documents: The Hyde Park Dec- laration. " http://www. ndol. org/ndol_ci. cfm? kaid=128&subid=174&contentid=1926 (accessed September 28, 2008).
DeNatale, Douglass, and Gregory Wassall. "The Creative Economy: A New Definition. " New English Foundation for the Arts. www. nefa. org/pubs (accessed September 28, 2008).
du Gay, Paul, and Michael Pryke. "Cultural Economy: An Introduction. " In Cultural Economy: Cultural Analysis and Commercial Life, edited by Paul du Gay and Michael Pryke, 1-20. London: Sage Press, 2002.
Fischer, Frank, and John Forester, eds. The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Plan- ning. Durham, N. C. : Duke University Press, 1993.
Florida, Richard, Gary Gates, Brian Knudsen, and Kevin Stolarick. "The University and the Creative Economy. " Creative Class. http://creativeclass. com/article_library/ (accessed September 20, 2008).
Flower, Linda, and John Ackerman. Writers at Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Freeland, Richard M. "Universities and Cities Need to Rethink Their Relationships. " Chronicle of Higher Education, May 13, 2005, B-13.
Gee, James, Glynda Hull, and Colin Lankshear. The New Work Order: Behind the Language of the New Capitalism. Sydney, Australia: Westview, 1996.
Goodman, Lee A. Phillips. Kent Ohio: Visions of a New Era. Kent, Ohio: Urban Design Center of Northeast Ohio, 1993. KSU Archives: NA9127. K43 K43x 1993.
Greene, Ronald W. "Orator Communist. " Philosophy and Rhetoric 39 (2006): 85-95. Hariman, Robert. Political Style: The Artistry of Power. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1995.
Hariman, Robert, and John Lucaites. "Dissent and Emotional Management. " In No Cap-
tion Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy, 137-70. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Hauser, Gerard. Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres. Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1999.
Hayden, Dolores. The Power of Place. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1995.
Henwood, Doug. After the New Economy: The Binge . . .
and the Hangover That Won't Go
Away. New York: New Press, 2003.
96 John M. Ackerman
Heritage Foundation. "Leadership for America. " http://www. heritage. org/ (accessed Sep- tember 4, 2008).
Higher Learning Commission. "Institutional Accreditation: An Overview. " http://www . ncacihe. org/index. php? option=com_content&task=view&id=83&Itemid=111 (accessed August 10, 2008).
Hoeger, Kerstin, and Kees Christiaanse, eds. Campus and the City: Urban Design for the Knowledge Society. Zurich, Switzerland: GTA Verlag, 2007.
Kent State University. "President's Strategic Plan. " http://www. kent. edu/Administra- tion/President/strategicinitiatives/StrategicPlan/ (accessed September 27, 2008).
Kohrs Campbell, Karlyn. "Promiscuous and Protean. " Communication and Critical/Cul- tural Studies 2 (2005): 1-19.
Lucaites, John L. , and Celeste M. Condit. "Epilogue: Contributions from Rhetorical Theory. " In Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader, edited by John L. Lucaites, Celeste M. Condit, and Sally Caudill, 609-13. New York: Guilford Press, 1999.
Lynch, Kevin. The Image of the City. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1960.
Markusen, Anne, and Amanda Johnson. "Artist's Centers: Evolution and Impacts on Careers, Neighborhoods, and Economies. " Humphries Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, www. hhh. umn. edu/projects/prie (accessed October 3, 2008).
Mouffe, Chantal. The Democratic Paradox. London: Verso, 2000.
National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. "Links. " http://www. higher
education. org/links/links. shtml (accessed August 10, 2008).
Newman, Katherine S. Declining Fortunes: The Withering of the American Dream. New
York: Basic Books, 1993.
Office of the City Manger of Kent, Ohio. "2005 Financial Report. " http://www. kentohio
. org/dep/manager. asp (accessed October 3, 2008).
Progressive Policy Institute. "About. " http://www. ppionline. org (accessed September
28, 2008).
------. "About the Third Way. " http://www. ppionline. org/ppi_ci. cfm? contentid
=895&knlgAreaID=85&subsecid=109 (accessed September 28, 2008).
Rossi, Aldo. The Architecture of the City. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1984.
Ruller, David. "Kent 360. " http://www. kent360. com (accessed October 3 and 30, 2008). Sennett, Richard. The Culture of the New Capitalism. New Haven, Conn. : Yale University
Press, 2006.
ServiceNation. "Executive Summary. " http://www. bethechangeinc. org/servicenation/
about_us/policy (accessed September 28, 2008).
Shorthose, Jim. "The New Cultural Economy, the Artist and the Social Configuration
of Autonomy. " Capital and Class, Winter 2004. http://findarticles. com/p/articles/
mi_qa3780/is_200401/ai_n9366243 (accessed October 2, 2008).
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District. " In Urban Studies Workshop, Summer 1971, papers by Pete Alterkruse, Wil-
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. umn. edu/cope/about/index. html (accessed September 27, 2008).
Rhetorical Engagement in the Cultural Economies of Cities 97
University of Utah. "Mission. " http://www. admin. utah. edu/president/mission. html (accessed September 27, 2008).
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? Democracy and Its Limitations
Ralph Cintron
"After the general idea of virtue, I know no higher principle than that of right; or rather these two ideas are united in one. The idea of right is simply that of virtue introduced into the political world. "1 The subject of this essay is our current political era, what I call democracy's post-Berlin Wall moment. Francis Fukuyama in his well-known 1989 "End of History? " and subsequent commentators from the Left and Right have plowed the same field. Although my orientation is considerably left of his, I want to recall some of Fukuyama's more dramatic and insightful claims as an introduction to some of my own: "What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War . . . but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolu- tion and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. . . . The victory of liberalism has occurred primarily in the realm of ideas or consciousness and is as yet incomplete in the real or material world. But there are powerful reasons for believing that it is the ideal that will govern the material world in the long run. "2
I quote his 1989 essay, as opposed to his later book with the expanded title, and more recent writings because the Berlin wall fell in November 1989, only a few months after the prescient essay's publication. At that moment it seemed indeed that liberal democracy's "universalization" had established itself as the ideal form of governance. But Fukuyama was merely reiterating one of the major premises that makes democracy massively compelling--namely, that democracy is on a teleological trajectory: history's "final form. " This is not to say that democratic theorists from Locke to Kant, to De Tocqueville, to John Rawls, to Fukuyama have whitewashed democracy's shortcomings. They, too, have their occasional reservations, but in the main these thinkers have helped to "virtuize" democracy so that, for the most part, the popular imaginary can no longer analyze democracy, as Aristotle may have, as just another form of governance. Nor can we, like Plato, articulate a deep suspicion of democracy.
There are probably numerous reasons for explaining the emergence of this enthusiasm--or, phrasing it more conceptually, the ontologization of democ- racy. By describing democracy as now "ontologized," I mean to say that over a number of centuries democracy has acquired a certain primordial value, an automatic virtue, a kind of fundamental, nearly metaphysical rightness. Among the reasons why, here are two:
1. Democracy from the early Enlightenment until now has defined itself against its negatives: monarchy, the uncivilized, Fascism, Communism, and, more recently, religious fundamentalism and terrorism. That is, the negative functions as a structural placeholder for incompleteness or vice. The positive functions as another placeholder, namely, democracy as virtue, and virtue accumulates with each successive victory until virtue begins to look innate to democracy.
The central point is that our post-Berlin Wall moment offers a remarkable opportunity. Democracy is now a global or transnational phenomenon, meaning that it is the "only game in town," as political theorists of eastern Europe have phrased it. 3 There is no serious con- tender against which to measure it. What is necessary, and indeed what may happen in our post-Berlin Wall moment, is democracy's sobering encounter with itself because the structuring negative has dissipated. And with that dissipation, will not the ideologies that helped to dismiss the structuring negatives also in time dissipate? My hope is that in en- countering itself--truly encountering itself: brutally, acidly--democracy will undergo a kind of purifying ritual.
2. From the early Enlightenment, democracy has been imagined within
a context of limitless material resources. Some exceptions to this view are, perhaps, those of Thomas Malthus and other reactionaries. In the main, however, there is an analogy between democracy as a kind of open-endedness of rights, freedoms, and so on, and the open-ended abundance of nature waiting to be harvested--or, phrasing it differently, the first was conceived within the imaginary of the second. The point
is that democracy through such devices as property rights awards the whole of nature to the abilities of individuals. Today's problem is that nature itself has become the restricting agent. If we are technologically unable to solve the impending exhaustion of nature, if we cannot dis- tribute nature to the new billions who also have a right to their share of property and commodities, democracy as open-ended rights and free- doms will need serious adjustment.
Given that rhetorical studies and democracy are so often paired as loving
companions, it makes sense that any deep critique of the ambitions of democ- racy will include a deep critique of the ambitions of rhetoric. That is, contem- porary rhetorical studies often imagines itself as furthering democracy, and in
Democracy and Its Limitations 99
100 Ralph Cintron
so doing it acquires a rationale and perhaps, as well, a kind of innate virtue. Because I do not wholly share these assumptions, I fear, then, that some read- ers of this essay will regard this piece as perverse, cynical, or even despairing. I do not think that is a correct reading. Those who know me best know that between the lines, for good or ill, there is a kind of radical, mystical poetics of egalitarianism driving everything, one that senses the insufficiency of the Right but also of the Left and even the radical Left. Hence the best reading will understand this essay as ultimately about the energy of topoi and things, about the depletion of energy, about the ever-moving, anarchistic power of energy.
Topoi and Social Energies
Let me turn to rhetorical theory to begin my argument, for at the heart of my discussion of democracy is the notion of topoi (commonplaces) as store- houses of social energy. The basic claim here is that topoi organize our senti- ments, beliefs, and actions in the lifeworld.
There are two terms in the phrase "topoi as storehouses of social energy" that have long histories in rhetoric. The first, of course, is "topoi," or common- places, and the second is "energy," or energeia. The first term moves through a long, remarkable history, one that I cannot here explore in detail. 4 Aristotle and many of his later followers, for instance, tended to exploit the ratiocina- tive potential of topoi in order to unpack a possible universal method for making arguments. Hence their concern with universal topoi empty of spe- cific content led them to explore such categories as similarity, comparison, definition, difference, cause, effect, and so on. In using these topoi, the goal was to establish a flexible set of mental procedures that could be applied to any issue at hand so as to generate a more rigorous dialectics and better logic and, if possible, proof in different disciplines. But this same tradition also had the goal of improving the much less rigorous arguments of rhetorical practice.
Cicero and others shifted the emphasis from matters of logic to matters of invention in the sense that topoi as seats for arguments could be exploited in the production of discourse, that is, invention. The method here was far more practical in the sense that topoi with content had at least as much value as topoi stripped of content. If emphasizing Aristotle's contentless topoi could serve a dialectician's need to produce valid arguments and proofs, an empha- sis upon content-filled topoi served the rhetor's need to amplify discourse by piling up ideas. A third tradition, which more properly might be considered an extension of the second, was the emergence of commonplace books en- abled by the invention of the printing press. These collections of quotations, excerpts, moral sentiments, aphorisms, fables, proverbial expressions, verbal ornaments, and so on--sometimes organized under separate disciplines of inquiry or heads of argument--served the elite classes and their need to pro- duce discourse.
62. Cool Cities Survey Results, "Voice of the Next Generation. " 63. Ruller, "Kent 360. "
94 John M. Ackerman Works Cited
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script, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2009.
Barnet, Richard J. , and John Cavanaugh. Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the
New World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.
Bennett, Lance W. , and Robert M. Entman. "Democracy in the Public Sphere. " In Medi-
ated Politics: Communication in the Future of Democracy, edited by W. Lance Bennett
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(1996): 11-20.
Boyte, Harry C. "Against the Current: Developing Civic Agency of Students. " Change,
May/June 2008, 1-11.
------. "A Different Kind of Politics: John Dewey and the Meaning of Citizenship in
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Rhetorical Engagement in the Cultural Economies of Cities 95
------. Remembering: A Phenomenological Study. Bloomington, Ind. : Indiana University Press, 2000.
Chaput, Kathy. Inside the Teaching Machine: Rhetoric and the Globalization of the U. S. Pub- lic Research University. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2008.
Christopherson, Susan. "Creative Economy Strategies for Small and Medium Size Cities: Options for New York State. " New York Creative Economy Progress Report, Cornell University, 2004. www. nycreativeeconomy. cornell. edu/reports/arts. mgi (accessed Octo- ber 10, 2008).
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Cool Cities Survey Results. "The Voice of the Next Generation. " http://www. kent360 . com/files/University/StudentSurvey. pdf (accessed September 15, 2008).
Crowley, Sharon. Toward a Civil Discourse: Rhetoric and Fundamentalism. Pittsburgh: Uni- versity of Pittsburgh Press, 2006.
Democratic Leadership Council. "The Third Way: Key Documents: The Hyde Park Dec- laration. " http://www. ndol. org/ndol_ci. cfm? kaid=128&subid=174&contentid=1926 (accessed September 28, 2008).
DeNatale, Douglass, and Gregory Wassall. "The Creative Economy: A New Definition. " New English Foundation for the Arts. www. nefa. org/pubs (accessed September 28, 2008).
du Gay, Paul, and Michael Pryke. "Cultural Economy: An Introduction. " In Cultural Economy: Cultural Analysis and Commercial Life, edited by Paul du Gay and Michael Pryke, 1-20. London: Sage Press, 2002.
Fischer, Frank, and John Forester, eds. The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Plan- ning. Durham, N. C. : Duke University Press, 1993.
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Flower, Linda, and John Ackerman. Writers at Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Freeland, Richard M. "Universities and Cities Need to Rethink Their Relationships. " Chronicle of Higher Education, May 13, 2005, B-13.
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Goodman, Lee A. Phillips. Kent Ohio: Visions of a New Era. Kent, Ohio: Urban Design Center of Northeast Ohio, 1993. KSU Archives: NA9127. K43 K43x 1993.
Greene, Ronald W. "Orator Communist. " Philosophy and Rhetoric 39 (2006): 85-95. Hariman, Robert. Political Style: The Artistry of Power. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1995.
Hariman, Robert, and John Lucaites. "Dissent and Emotional Management. " In No Cap-
tion Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy, 137-70. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Hauser, Gerard. Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres. Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1999.
Hayden, Dolores. The Power of Place. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1995.
Henwood, Doug. After the New Economy: The Binge . . .
and the Hangover That Won't Go
Away. New York: New Press, 2003.
96 John M. Ackerman
Heritage Foundation. "Leadership for America. " http://www. heritage. org/ (accessed Sep- tember 4, 2008).
Higher Learning Commission. "Institutional Accreditation: An Overview. " http://www . ncacihe. org/index. php? option=com_content&task=view&id=83&Itemid=111 (accessed August 10, 2008).
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Kohrs Campbell, Karlyn. "Promiscuous and Protean. " Communication and Critical/Cul- tural Studies 2 (2005): 1-19.
Lucaites, John L. , and Celeste M. Condit. "Epilogue: Contributions from Rhetorical Theory. " In Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader, edited by John L. Lucaites, Celeste M. Condit, and Sally Caudill, 609-13. New York: Guilford Press, 1999.
Lynch, Kevin. The Image of the City. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1960.
Markusen, Anne, and Amanda Johnson. "Artist's Centers: Evolution and Impacts on Careers, Neighborhoods, and Economies. " Humphries Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, www. hhh. umn. edu/projects/prie (accessed October 3, 2008).
Mouffe, Chantal. The Democratic Paradox. London: Verso, 2000.
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education. org/links/links. shtml (accessed August 10, 2008).
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=895&knlgAreaID=85&subsecid=109 (accessed September 28, 2008).
Rossi, Aldo. The Architecture of the City. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1984.
Ruller, David. "Kent 360. " http://www. kent360. com (accessed October 3 and 30, 2008). Sennett, Richard. The Culture of the New Capitalism. New Haven, Conn. : Yale University
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Rhetorical Engagement in the Cultural Economies of Cities 97
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New Engagement? Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Zukin, Helen. The Culture of Cities. Oxford: Blackwell Press, 1995.
? Democracy and Its Limitations
Ralph Cintron
"After the general idea of virtue, I know no higher principle than that of right; or rather these two ideas are united in one. The idea of right is simply that of virtue introduced into the political world. "1 The subject of this essay is our current political era, what I call democracy's post-Berlin Wall moment. Francis Fukuyama in his well-known 1989 "End of History? " and subsequent commentators from the Left and Right have plowed the same field. Although my orientation is considerably left of his, I want to recall some of Fukuyama's more dramatic and insightful claims as an introduction to some of my own: "What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War . . . but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolu- tion and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. . . . The victory of liberalism has occurred primarily in the realm of ideas or consciousness and is as yet incomplete in the real or material world. But there are powerful reasons for believing that it is the ideal that will govern the material world in the long run. "2
I quote his 1989 essay, as opposed to his later book with the expanded title, and more recent writings because the Berlin wall fell in November 1989, only a few months after the prescient essay's publication. At that moment it seemed indeed that liberal democracy's "universalization" had established itself as the ideal form of governance. But Fukuyama was merely reiterating one of the major premises that makes democracy massively compelling--namely, that democracy is on a teleological trajectory: history's "final form. " This is not to say that democratic theorists from Locke to Kant, to De Tocqueville, to John Rawls, to Fukuyama have whitewashed democracy's shortcomings. They, too, have their occasional reservations, but in the main these thinkers have helped to "virtuize" democracy so that, for the most part, the popular imaginary can no longer analyze democracy, as Aristotle may have, as just another form of governance. Nor can we, like Plato, articulate a deep suspicion of democracy.
There are probably numerous reasons for explaining the emergence of this enthusiasm--or, phrasing it more conceptually, the ontologization of democ- racy. By describing democracy as now "ontologized," I mean to say that over a number of centuries democracy has acquired a certain primordial value, an automatic virtue, a kind of fundamental, nearly metaphysical rightness. Among the reasons why, here are two:
1. Democracy from the early Enlightenment until now has defined itself against its negatives: monarchy, the uncivilized, Fascism, Communism, and, more recently, religious fundamentalism and terrorism. That is, the negative functions as a structural placeholder for incompleteness or vice. The positive functions as another placeholder, namely, democracy as virtue, and virtue accumulates with each successive victory until virtue begins to look innate to democracy.
The central point is that our post-Berlin Wall moment offers a remarkable opportunity. Democracy is now a global or transnational phenomenon, meaning that it is the "only game in town," as political theorists of eastern Europe have phrased it. 3 There is no serious con- tender against which to measure it. What is necessary, and indeed what may happen in our post-Berlin Wall moment, is democracy's sobering encounter with itself because the structuring negative has dissipated. And with that dissipation, will not the ideologies that helped to dismiss the structuring negatives also in time dissipate? My hope is that in en- countering itself--truly encountering itself: brutally, acidly--democracy will undergo a kind of purifying ritual.
2. From the early Enlightenment, democracy has been imagined within
a context of limitless material resources. Some exceptions to this view are, perhaps, those of Thomas Malthus and other reactionaries. In the main, however, there is an analogy between democracy as a kind of open-endedness of rights, freedoms, and so on, and the open-ended abundance of nature waiting to be harvested--or, phrasing it differently, the first was conceived within the imaginary of the second. The point
is that democracy through such devices as property rights awards the whole of nature to the abilities of individuals. Today's problem is that nature itself has become the restricting agent. If we are technologically unable to solve the impending exhaustion of nature, if we cannot dis- tribute nature to the new billions who also have a right to their share of property and commodities, democracy as open-ended rights and free- doms will need serious adjustment.
Given that rhetorical studies and democracy are so often paired as loving
companions, it makes sense that any deep critique of the ambitions of democ- racy will include a deep critique of the ambitions of rhetoric. That is, contem- porary rhetorical studies often imagines itself as furthering democracy, and in
Democracy and Its Limitations 99
100 Ralph Cintron
so doing it acquires a rationale and perhaps, as well, a kind of innate virtue. Because I do not wholly share these assumptions, I fear, then, that some read- ers of this essay will regard this piece as perverse, cynical, or even despairing. I do not think that is a correct reading. Those who know me best know that between the lines, for good or ill, there is a kind of radical, mystical poetics of egalitarianism driving everything, one that senses the insufficiency of the Right but also of the Left and even the radical Left. Hence the best reading will understand this essay as ultimately about the energy of topoi and things, about the depletion of energy, about the ever-moving, anarchistic power of energy.
Topoi and Social Energies
Let me turn to rhetorical theory to begin my argument, for at the heart of my discussion of democracy is the notion of topoi (commonplaces) as store- houses of social energy. The basic claim here is that topoi organize our senti- ments, beliefs, and actions in the lifeworld.
There are two terms in the phrase "topoi as storehouses of social energy" that have long histories in rhetoric. The first, of course, is "topoi," or common- places, and the second is "energy," or energeia. The first term moves through a long, remarkable history, one that I cannot here explore in detail. 4 Aristotle and many of his later followers, for instance, tended to exploit the ratiocina- tive potential of topoi in order to unpack a possible universal method for making arguments. Hence their concern with universal topoi empty of spe- cific content led them to explore such categories as similarity, comparison, definition, difference, cause, effect, and so on. In using these topoi, the goal was to establish a flexible set of mental procedures that could be applied to any issue at hand so as to generate a more rigorous dialectics and better logic and, if possible, proof in different disciplines. But this same tradition also had the goal of improving the much less rigorous arguments of rhetorical practice.
Cicero and others shifted the emphasis from matters of logic to matters of invention in the sense that topoi as seats for arguments could be exploited in the production of discourse, that is, invention. The method here was far more practical in the sense that topoi with content had at least as much value as topoi stripped of content. If emphasizing Aristotle's contentless topoi could serve a dialectician's need to produce valid arguments and proofs, an empha- sis upon content-filled topoi served the rhetor's need to amplify discourse by piling up ideas. A third tradition, which more properly might be considered an extension of the second, was the emergence of commonplace books en- abled by the invention of the printing press. These collections of quotations, excerpts, moral sentiments, aphorisms, fables, proverbial expressions, verbal ornaments, and so on--sometimes organized under separate disciplines of inquiry or heads of argument--served the elite classes and their need to pro- duce discourse.
