:
University
of Michigan Press, 1967.
The Public Work of Rhetoric_nodrm
23.
Stuckey, Violence of Literacy.
24.
Bjiker, Of Bicycles, 45+.
25. Hauser, Vernacular Voices, 57+. 26. Wacquant, "Structure," 46.
27. Mailloux, "Places in Time. "
28. Lucaites, "McGee Unplugged," 8. 29. Smith and Low, Introduction. 30. Baskerville, "Responses," 152.
31. Johnstone, "Some Trends," 80. Samuel Becker in the same volume refers to the Democratic National Convention riots of 1968 and to when he heard of the assassina- tion of Martin Luther King Jr. from a cab driver in Chicago. For Barnet Baskerville in his "Responses, Queries, and a Few Caveats" (151-65), the "streets echo the angry voices of those who would usher in a new order by destroying the old" and thus as an assault on reason. It was noted in Prospects that Phillip Tompkins from Kent State University could not participate; the Pheasant Run conference occurred six days after the Kent State shooting on May 4, 1970.
32. Lefebvre, "Seen from the Window," 221.
33. Sheringham, Everyday Life, 375. Sheringham quotes from Lefebvre, Critique, 309. 34. Mathieu, Tactics, xiv.
35. See Soja, Thirdspace, 14.
36. Bitzer, "More Reflections," 201-2.
37. Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers, 7.
38. Greene, "Orator Communist," 86.
39. Barnet and Cavanagh, Global Dreams, 17.
40. Ibid. , 21.
41. King, "Rhetorical Critic," 311.
42. See Hayden, Building Suburbia; Graham and Marvin, Splintering Urbanism. 43. Hales, How We Became, 136-37.
44. Farrell, "Elliptical Postscript," 57.
45. Lucaites and Condit, "Epilogue," 610-11.
Works Cited
Appadurai, Arjun. Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger. Durham, N. C. : Duke University Press, 2006.
Barnet, Richard J. , and John Cavanagh. Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the New World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.
Baskerville, Barnet. "Responses, Queries, and a Few Caveats. " In The Prospect of Rhetoric: Report of the National Development Project, edited by Lloyd F. Bitzer and Edwin Black, 151-65. Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice Hall, 1971.
Becker, Samuel. "Rhetorical Studies for the Contemporary World. " In The Prospect of Rhetoric: Report of the National Development Project, edited by Lloyd F. Bitzer and Edwin Black, 21-43. Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice Hall, 1971.
Berlin, James. Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-1985. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987.
Bitzer, Lloyd. "More Reflections on the Wingspread Conference. " In The Prospect of Rhet- oric: Report of the National Development Project, edited by Lloyd F. Bitzer and Edwin Black, 200-207. Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice Hall, 1971.
------. "Rhetoric and Public Knowledge. " In Rhetoric, Philosophy and Literature, edited by Don Burks, 67-93. West Lafayette, Ind. : Purdue University Press, 1978.
Bjiker, Weibe. Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1997.
Introduction 13
14 David J. Coogan and John M. Ackerman
Black, Edwin. "The Prospect of Rhetoric: Twenty-five Years Later. " In Making and Unmak- ing the Prospects of Rhetoric, edited by Theresa Enos and Richard McNabb, 21-128. Mahway, N. J. : Erlbaum Press, 1997.
Blair, Carole. "'We Are All Prisoners Here of Our Own Device': Rhetoric in Speech Com- munication after Wingspread. " In Making and Unmaking the Prospects for Rhetoric, edited by Theresa Enos and Richard McNabb, 29-36. Mahway, N. J. : Erlbaum Press, 1997.
Booth, Wayne. "The Scope of Rhetoric Today. " In The Prospect of Rhetoric: Report of the National Development Project, edited by Lloyd F. Bitzer and Edwin Black, 93-114. Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice Hall, 1971.
Brint, Steven. "The Rise of the Practical Arts. " In The Future of the City of Intellect: The Changing American University, edited by Steven Brint, 231-59. Stanford, Calif. : Stan- ford University Press, 2002.
Bruffee, Ken. "Collaborative Learning and the Conversation of Mankind. " In Cross-talk in Comp Theory: A Reader, edited by Victor Villanueva, 415-34. Urbana, Ill. : National Council of Teachers of English, 2003.
Culler, Jonathon. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism. Ithaca, N. Y. : Cornell University Press, 1982.
Cushman, Ellen. "The Rhetorician as an Agent of Social Change. " College Composition and Communication 47 (1996): 7-28.
de Certeau, Michel. "Walking in the City. " In The Practice of Everyday Life, 91-114. Berke- ley: University of California Press, 1984.
Ehninger, Douglass. "Report of the Committee on the Scope and Place of Rhetorical Studies in Higher Education. " In The Prospect of Rhetoric: Report of the National Devel- opment Project, edited by Lloyd F. Bitzer and Edwin Black, 208-19. Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice Hall, 1971.
Farrell, Thomas. "An Elliptical Postscript. " In Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Inter- pretation in the Age of Science, edited by Allan G. Gross and William M. Keith, 317-29. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997.
Flower, Linda, and John Hayes. "A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing. " In Cross-talk in Comp Theory: A Reader, edited by Victor Villanueva, 273-98. Urbana, Ill. : National Council of Teachers of English, 2003.
Gaonkar, Dilip. "The Idea of Rhetoric in the Rhetoric of Science. " In Rhetorical Herme- neutics, edited by Alan Gross and William Keith, 25-88. Albany: SUNY, 1997.
------. "Rhetoric and Its Double: Reflections on the Rhetorical Turn in the Human Sciences. " In Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader, edited by John L. Lucaites, Celeste M. Condit, and Sally Caudill, 194-212. New York: Guilford Press, 1999.
Graham, Stephen, and Simon Marvin. Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities, and the Urban Condition. London: Routledge, 2001.
Greene, Ronald. "Orator Communist. " Philosophy and Rhetoric 39 (2006): 85-95.
Gross, Alan, and William Keith. Introduction. In Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science, edited by Alan Gross and William Keith, 1-24.
Albany: SUNY Press, 1997.
Hales, Kathryn. How We Became Post Human: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and
Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Hauser, Gerard. Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres. Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1999.
Hayden, Dolores. Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000. New York:
Vintage Books, 2004.
Johnstone, Henry. "Some Trends in Rhetorical Theory. " In The Prospect of Rhetoric: Report of the National Development Project, edited by Lloyd F. Bitzer and Edwin Black, 78-92. Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice Hall, 1971.
King, Andrew. "The Rhetorical Critic and the Invisible Polis. " In Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science, edited by Allan G. Gross and William M. Keith, 299-314. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997.
Lauer, Janice. Invention in Contemporary Rhetoric: Heuristic Procedures. Ann Arbor, Mich.
: University of Michigan Press, 1967.
Lefebvre, Henri. Critique of Everyday Life, Vol. 1. Translated by J. Moore. 1947. Reprint, London: Verso, 1991.
------. "Seen from the Window. " In Writings of Cities, translated and edited by Eleonore LeFevre, Karen Burke. Invention as a Social Act. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univer- sity Press, 1987.
Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas, 219-27. Malden, Mass. : Blackwell, 1996.
Leff, Michael. "In Search of Adriadne's Thread. " In Landmark Essays on Contemporary Rhetorical Theory, edited by Thomas Farrell, 43-63. Mahwah, N. J. : LEA Hergamoras
Press, 1998.
Lucaites, John. "McGee Unplugged. " In Rhetoric in Postmodern America: Conversations
with Michael Calvin McGee, edited by Carol Corbin, 3-26. New York: Guilford Press,
1998.
Lucaites, John, and Celeste Condit. "Epilogue: Contributions from Rhetorical Theory. "
In Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader, edited by John L. Lucaites, Celeste M.
Condit, and Sally Caudill, 610-11. New York: Guilford Press, 1999.
Lunsford, Andrea, and Lisa Ede. "Audience Addressed, Audience Invoked. " In Cross-talk in Comp Theory: A Reader, edited by Victor Villanueva, 77-96. Urbana, Ill. : National
Council of Teachers of English, 2003.
Mailloux, Steven. "Places in Time: The Inns and Outhouses of Rhetoric. " Quarterly Jour-
nal of Speech 92 (2006): 53-68.
Mathieu, Paula. Tactics of Hope: The Public Turn in English Composition. Portsmouth, N. H. :
Boynton/Cook, 2005.
McKerrow, Raymie. "Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Practice. " Communication Monographs
56 (1989): 441-63.
Miller, Susan. Rescuing the Subject. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989. Obama, Barack. "Barack Obama: A Call to Serve. " Time/CNN. September 11, 2008. http:
//www. time. com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1840636,00. html (accessed March 23,
2009).
------. "A New Era of Service. " Time, March 30, 2009, 33.
Pickering, Andrew. "From Science as Knowledge to Science as Practice. " In Science as Prac-
tice and Culture, edited by Andrew Pickering, 1-28. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1996.
Sheringham, Michael. Everyday Life: Theories and Practices from Surrealism to the Present.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Shor, Ira. Critical Teaching and Everyday Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Sloop, John. The Cultural Prison. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1996.
Smith, Neil, and Setha Low. "Introduction: The Imperative of Public Space. " In The Poli-
tics of Public Space, edited by Setha Low and Neil Smith, 1-16. New York: Routledge,
2006.
Soja, Edward. Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real and Imagined Places.
Malden, Mass. : Wiley-Blackwell, 1996.
Introduction 15
16 David J. Coogan and John M. Ackerman
Stuckey, J. Elspeth. The Violence of Literacy. Portsmouth, N. H. : Boynton/Cook, 1990. Wacquant, Loi? c. "The Structure and Logic of Bourdieu's Sociology. " In An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, edited by Pierre Bourdieu and Loi? c Wacquant, 2-59. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1992.
Wallace, Karl. "The Fundamentals of Rhetoric. " In the Prospect of Rhetoric: Report of
National Development Project, edited by Lloyd F. Blitzer and Edwin Black, 3-20. Engle-
wood Cliffs, N. J. Prentice Hall, 1971.
Wilchens, Herbert A. "The Literary Criticism of Oratory. " In Readings in Rehtorical Criti-
cism, edited by Carl R. Burgchardt, 3-28. State College, Pa. : Strata Publishing, 2000. Young, Richard, Alton Becker, and Kenneth Pike. Rhetoric: Discovery and Change. New
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Zarefsky, David. "Institutional and Social Goals. " Rhetoric Society Quarterly 34 (2004):
27-38.
[ part1 ]
Rhetoric Revealed
? Should We Name the Tools?
Concealing and Revealing the Art of Rhetoric
Carolyn R. Miller
"Socrates: My accusers . . . told you that you must be careful not to let me deceive you--the implication being that I am a skillful speaker. I thought that it was peculiarly brazen of them to tell you this without a blush, since they must know that they will soon be effectively confuted, when it becomes obvi- ous that I have not the slightest skill as a speaker--unless, of course, by a skill- ful speaker they mean one who speaks the truth. "1
Throughout its troubled history, two opposing impulses have persisted within rhetoric, an impulse toward self-aggrandizement and another toward self-denial. Plato's Gorgias announces grandly that rhetoric is "the greatest boon, for it brings freedom to mankind in general and to each man domin- ion over others. "2 Cicero's Crassus claims that "in every free nation, and most of all in communities which have attained the enjoyment of peace and tran- quillity, [eloquence] has always flourished above the rest and ever reigned supreme. "3 This one art, he says, has the ability "to raise up those that are cast down, to bestow security, to set free from peril, to maintain men in their civil rights. "4 And rhetoric is not only powerful, it is ubiquitous; it can speak on any subject: as Plato's Gorgias claims, "rhetoric includes practically all other faculties under her control. "5 Thus rhetoric vaunts itself, both in the academy and in the public sphere.
Such self-aggrandizement is not unfamiliar to contemporary minds, as rhetoric has experienced a disciplinary and intellectual renaissance, with jour- nals and books, curricula and symposia, devoted to its power and ubiquity. We have said that rhetoric is "epistemic," that it affects the conduct of in- quiry and the substance of knowledge across the disciplines. We have com- mitted ourselves to using the powers of rhetoric to meet challenges in the public realm, challenges to social justice, democratic process, public respon- sibility, and civility. Kenneth Burke, in an anaphoric, epanaleptic aphorism we love to quote, told us that "wherever there is persuasion there is rhetoric.
20 Carolyn R. Miller
And wherever there is 'meaning' there is 'persuasion. '"6 Rhetoric's imperialism has reached such a pitch recently that critical alarms have been sounded, urg- ing "attenuations" of its epistemic claims and challenging its ambitions as a "universalized," "promiscuous," "free-floating," "interpretive metadiscourse. "7
Criticism like this helps to counter rhetoric's grand ambitions, but there is another countervailing force, and that is rhetoric's own enduring impulse toward self-denial. Here, rhetoric seeks not to "flourish" or to "reign," but to disappear, to get out of the way, possibly even to admit to being "mere rhet- oric. " The motto for this impulse is that the art of rhetoric lies in concealing the art: ars est artem celare. 8 Rhetorical treatises, beginning at least with Aris- totle, point out the need for rhetorical artifice and strategy to remain hidden: "authors should compose without being noticed and should seem to speak not artificially but naturally. (The latter is persuasive, the former the opposite. )"9 George Kennedy calls this passage "perhaps the earliest statement in criticism that the greatest art is to disguise art. "10 In De Inventione, Cicero noted that brilliance and vivacity of style "can give rise to a suspicion of preparation and excessive ingenuity. As a result of this most of the speech loses conviction and the speaker, authority. "11 Quintilian put the matter plainly: "if an orator does command a certain art . . . , its highest expression will be in the conceal- ment of its existence. "12
Rhetoric, it seems, must deny itself to succeed. Michael Cahn has called this rule "the very heart of rhetoric," right from its beginning. 13 The principle has become embedded in the tradition, a commonplace passed along and kept alive by writers who include Puttenham, La Rochefoucauld, Butler, Swift, Pope, Burke, Rousseau, and Wilde. The principle is modeled for the Renais- sance in Castiglione's concept of sprezzatura, glossed by Richard Lanham as a "rehearsed spontaneity" and described by Castiglione himself as a capacity ensuring that "art is hidden and whatever is said and done seems without effort or forethought. "14 Sprezzatura is celebrated in the English Renaissance from Herrick to Sidney to Shakespeare. 15 Another Renaissance figure who serves for us as the paragon of dissimulation is Machiavelli, who advises the prince that because it is sometimes necessary to do evil, it is also necessary to dissimulate, to construct what we might now call "plausible deniability," so that "everyone sees what you appear to be, [but] few know what you really are. "16 But the principle of rhetorical concealment is more than the everyday dissimulation of intentions: it is the conviction that the means by which intentions are concealed must also remain undetectable; in other words, we must be convinced that no dissimulation is going on; it is a dissimulation of means as much as of ends. Thus, if "all a rhetorician's rules / Teach nothing but to name his tools," it is best if the tools--and their names--remain under wraps when Sir Hudibras sallies forth.
According to Cahn, rhetoric is the only art with this tradition of self-denial, the one art that "has to live with the requirement of concealing its achievement
in order to attain recognition. "17 Indeed, the ancient arts that were often com- pared with rhetoric, such as medicine, cookery, flute-playing, navigation, and gymnastics, do not seem to have much to hide, and neither do such contem- porary arts as engineering or architecture. We can use and appreciate their products or results even if we happen know a great deal about how they are produced, what materials, ingredients, processes, and techniques go into their success. But other arts are different, and these are used by Plato in a series of complex comparisons and classifications that suggest rhetoric's affinity with arts such as cosmetics, seduction, enchantment, hunting, and military strat- egy. 18 Here the story is different, suggesting that Cahn may not be correct about rhetoric's unique need for concealment. Cosmetics, for example, part of Socrates' elaborate comparison of the sham arts and the true arts in the Gor- gias, would seem to require concealment. 19 Like theatrical illusion, the effect of the cosmetic art dissipates the more we know about its part in the creation of beauty. We admire the skill involved in exercising the art rather than the appearance of the wearer, the art itself rather than its results.
If dissimulation and concealment are indeed necessary for rhetorical success, we face a number of problems as we contemplate both the public work of rhetoric and the educational role of rhetoric. If rhetoric can be more effective, more useful, more powerful, if it remains concealed, what can it mean for rhetoric to go public? What can its "public work" be? Is there a self- defeating premise built into the educational project? Or an entailment of ever more widespread cynicism? If, through the sustained rhetorical education and public acceptance we seek, rhetoric is indeed revealed as a Gorgianic power available to everyone, will public discourse or our social conditions actually improve? The dilemma that intrigues me is epitomized in a New Yorker cartoon, where the public work of rhetoric is unconcealed by naming the tools.
In this essay, I spend some time exploring the principle of concealment in more detail, drawing primarily on the multiple ways that it is expressed in the classical tradition, because the ancients were astute observers of the work- ings of rhetorical power, particularly in the public realm. I examine these sources for what they can reveal about the justifications for and consequences of concealment. The sources give some clues to the conditions in which rhet- oric must work and thus the possibilities for its public role. And I close with some observations about what these conditions mean for the relationship be- tween rhetoric's public work and rhetoric's role in the education of citizens for that work.
The classical sources are suffused with observations and advice about the necessity for concealment. 20 They reveal a series of recurring themes that jus- tify the need to conceal the art of rhetoric. These themes seem to derive from two foundational assumptions that are fully naturalized in our understandings
Should We Name the Tools? 21
22 Carolyn R. Miller
? (C) The New Yorker Collection 2000. Alex Gregory from cartoonbank. com. All rights reserved
of how humans use language: an adversarial model of human relations and a mimetic model of language.
Human Relations Are Adversarial
1. The dominant and most frequent theme is one I call suspicion. This theme appears in the passage by Aristotle quoted earlier: artifice is not persuasive, because it makes people suspect "someone plotting against them. "21 We treat the intentions of others as plots against us in a zero-sum game: if you win, I lose. You are likely to be trying to cheat me out of something, to deceive me, so I must be suspicious. Athenian suspicion was embedded into a law against deceiving the democracy, a law justified in Demosthenes' statement to the assembly that "A man can do you no greater injustice than telling lies; for, where the political constitution is based on speeches/words, how can it be safely administered if the words/speeches are false? "22
Two examples from the advice about concealment suggest how pervasive the theme of suspicion is in the classical tradition:
There is an inevitable suspicion attaching to the unconscionable use of figures. It gives a suggestion of treachery, craft, fallacy, especially when your speech is addressed to a judge with absolute authority. . . . So we
find that a figure is always most effective when it conceals the very fact of its being a figure. 23
Care must be taken to avoid exciting any suspicion in this portion
of our speech, and we should therefore give no hint of elaboration in the exordium, since any art that the orator may employ at this point seems to be directed solely at the judge. 24
2. The second theme, spontaneity, identifies the notion that statements we can trust are those that come easily and naturally; conversely, a premeditated statement, one that is obviously crafted and constructed beforehand, deserves our suspicion. For example, the Rhetorica Ad Herennium cautions about the use of certain figures involving word-play: "[such figures] are to be used very sparingly when we speak in an actual cause, because their invention seems impossible without labour and pains.
25. Hauser, Vernacular Voices, 57+. 26. Wacquant, "Structure," 46.
27. Mailloux, "Places in Time. "
28. Lucaites, "McGee Unplugged," 8. 29. Smith and Low, Introduction. 30. Baskerville, "Responses," 152.
31. Johnstone, "Some Trends," 80. Samuel Becker in the same volume refers to the Democratic National Convention riots of 1968 and to when he heard of the assassina- tion of Martin Luther King Jr. from a cab driver in Chicago. For Barnet Baskerville in his "Responses, Queries, and a Few Caveats" (151-65), the "streets echo the angry voices of those who would usher in a new order by destroying the old" and thus as an assault on reason. It was noted in Prospects that Phillip Tompkins from Kent State University could not participate; the Pheasant Run conference occurred six days after the Kent State shooting on May 4, 1970.
32. Lefebvre, "Seen from the Window," 221.
33. Sheringham, Everyday Life, 375. Sheringham quotes from Lefebvre, Critique, 309. 34. Mathieu, Tactics, xiv.
35. See Soja, Thirdspace, 14.
36. Bitzer, "More Reflections," 201-2.
37. Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers, 7.
38. Greene, "Orator Communist," 86.
39. Barnet and Cavanagh, Global Dreams, 17.
40. Ibid. , 21.
41. King, "Rhetorical Critic," 311.
42. See Hayden, Building Suburbia; Graham and Marvin, Splintering Urbanism. 43. Hales, How We Became, 136-37.
44. Farrell, "Elliptical Postscript," 57.
45. Lucaites and Condit, "Epilogue," 610-11.
Works Cited
Appadurai, Arjun. Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger. Durham, N. C. : Duke University Press, 2006.
Barnet, Richard J. , and John Cavanagh. Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the New World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.
Baskerville, Barnet. "Responses, Queries, and a Few Caveats. " In The Prospect of Rhetoric: Report of the National Development Project, edited by Lloyd F. Bitzer and Edwin Black, 151-65. Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice Hall, 1971.
Becker, Samuel. "Rhetorical Studies for the Contemporary World. " In The Prospect of Rhetoric: Report of the National Development Project, edited by Lloyd F. Bitzer and Edwin Black, 21-43. Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice Hall, 1971.
Berlin, James. Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-1985. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987.
Bitzer, Lloyd. "More Reflections on the Wingspread Conference. " In The Prospect of Rhet- oric: Report of the National Development Project, edited by Lloyd F. Bitzer and Edwin Black, 200-207. Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice Hall, 1971.
------. "Rhetoric and Public Knowledge. " In Rhetoric, Philosophy and Literature, edited by Don Burks, 67-93. West Lafayette, Ind. : Purdue University Press, 1978.
Bjiker, Weibe. Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1997.
Introduction 13
14 David J. Coogan and John M. Ackerman
Black, Edwin. "The Prospect of Rhetoric: Twenty-five Years Later. " In Making and Unmak- ing the Prospects of Rhetoric, edited by Theresa Enos and Richard McNabb, 21-128. Mahway, N. J. : Erlbaum Press, 1997.
Blair, Carole. "'We Are All Prisoners Here of Our Own Device': Rhetoric in Speech Com- munication after Wingspread. " In Making and Unmaking the Prospects for Rhetoric, edited by Theresa Enos and Richard McNabb, 29-36. Mahway, N. J. : Erlbaum Press, 1997.
Booth, Wayne. "The Scope of Rhetoric Today. " In The Prospect of Rhetoric: Report of the National Development Project, edited by Lloyd F. Bitzer and Edwin Black, 93-114. Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice Hall, 1971.
Brint, Steven. "The Rise of the Practical Arts. " In The Future of the City of Intellect: The Changing American University, edited by Steven Brint, 231-59. Stanford, Calif. : Stan- ford University Press, 2002.
Bruffee, Ken. "Collaborative Learning and the Conversation of Mankind. " In Cross-talk in Comp Theory: A Reader, edited by Victor Villanueva, 415-34. Urbana, Ill. : National Council of Teachers of English, 2003.
Culler, Jonathon. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism. Ithaca, N. Y. : Cornell University Press, 1982.
Cushman, Ellen. "The Rhetorician as an Agent of Social Change. " College Composition and Communication 47 (1996): 7-28.
de Certeau, Michel. "Walking in the City. " In The Practice of Everyday Life, 91-114. Berke- ley: University of California Press, 1984.
Ehninger, Douglass. "Report of the Committee on the Scope and Place of Rhetorical Studies in Higher Education. " In The Prospect of Rhetoric: Report of the National Devel- opment Project, edited by Lloyd F. Bitzer and Edwin Black, 208-19. Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice Hall, 1971.
Farrell, Thomas. "An Elliptical Postscript. " In Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Inter- pretation in the Age of Science, edited by Allan G. Gross and William M. Keith, 317-29. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997.
Flower, Linda, and John Hayes. "A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing. " In Cross-talk in Comp Theory: A Reader, edited by Victor Villanueva, 273-98. Urbana, Ill. : National Council of Teachers of English, 2003.
Gaonkar, Dilip. "The Idea of Rhetoric in the Rhetoric of Science. " In Rhetorical Herme- neutics, edited by Alan Gross and William Keith, 25-88. Albany: SUNY, 1997.
------. "Rhetoric and Its Double: Reflections on the Rhetorical Turn in the Human Sciences. " In Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader, edited by John L. Lucaites, Celeste M. Condit, and Sally Caudill, 194-212. New York: Guilford Press, 1999.
Graham, Stephen, and Simon Marvin. Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities, and the Urban Condition. London: Routledge, 2001.
Greene, Ronald. "Orator Communist. " Philosophy and Rhetoric 39 (2006): 85-95.
Gross, Alan, and William Keith. Introduction. In Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science, edited by Alan Gross and William Keith, 1-24.
Albany: SUNY Press, 1997.
Hales, Kathryn. How We Became Post Human: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and
Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Hauser, Gerard. Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres. Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1999.
Hayden, Dolores. Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000. New York:
Vintage Books, 2004.
Johnstone, Henry. "Some Trends in Rhetorical Theory. " In The Prospect of Rhetoric: Report of the National Development Project, edited by Lloyd F. Bitzer and Edwin Black, 78-92. Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice Hall, 1971.
King, Andrew. "The Rhetorical Critic and the Invisible Polis. " In Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science, edited by Allan G. Gross and William M. Keith, 299-314. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997.
Lauer, Janice. Invention in Contemporary Rhetoric: Heuristic Procedures. Ann Arbor, Mich.
: University of Michigan Press, 1967.
Lefebvre, Henri. Critique of Everyday Life, Vol. 1. Translated by J. Moore. 1947. Reprint, London: Verso, 1991.
------. "Seen from the Window. " In Writings of Cities, translated and edited by Eleonore LeFevre, Karen Burke. Invention as a Social Act. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univer- sity Press, 1987.
Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas, 219-27. Malden, Mass. : Blackwell, 1996.
Leff, Michael. "In Search of Adriadne's Thread. " In Landmark Essays on Contemporary Rhetorical Theory, edited by Thomas Farrell, 43-63. Mahwah, N. J. : LEA Hergamoras
Press, 1998.
Lucaites, John. "McGee Unplugged. " In Rhetoric in Postmodern America: Conversations
with Michael Calvin McGee, edited by Carol Corbin, 3-26. New York: Guilford Press,
1998.
Lucaites, John, and Celeste Condit. "Epilogue: Contributions from Rhetorical Theory. "
In Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader, edited by John L. Lucaites, Celeste M.
Condit, and Sally Caudill, 610-11. New York: Guilford Press, 1999.
Lunsford, Andrea, and Lisa Ede. "Audience Addressed, Audience Invoked. " In Cross-talk in Comp Theory: A Reader, edited by Victor Villanueva, 77-96. Urbana, Ill. : National
Council of Teachers of English, 2003.
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[ part1 ]
Rhetoric Revealed
? Should We Name the Tools?
Concealing and Revealing the Art of Rhetoric
Carolyn R. Miller
"Socrates: My accusers . . . told you that you must be careful not to let me deceive you--the implication being that I am a skillful speaker. I thought that it was peculiarly brazen of them to tell you this without a blush, since they must know that they will soon be effectively confuted, when it becomes obvi- ous that I have not the slightest skill as a speaker--unless, of course, by a skill- ful speaker they mean one who speaks the truth. "1
Throughout its troubled history, two opposing impulses have persisted within rhetoric, an impulse toward self-aggrandizement and another toward self-denial. Plato's Gorgias announces grandly that rhetoric is "the greatest boon, for it brings freedom to mankind in general and to each man domin- ion over others. "2 Cicero's Crassus claims that "in every free nation, and most of all in communities which have attained the enjoyment of peace and tran- quillity, [eloquence] has always flourished above the rest and ever reigned supreme. "3 This one art, he says, has the ability "to raise up those that are cast down, to bestow security, to set free from peril, to maintain men in their civil rights. "4 And rhetoric is not only powerful, it is ubiquitous; it can speak on any subject: as Plato's Gorgias claims, "rhetoric includes practically all other faculties under her control. "5 Thus rhetoric vaunts itself, both in the academy and in the public sphere.
Such self-aggrandizement is not unfamiliar to contemporary minds, as rhetoric has experienced a disciplinary and intellectual renaissance, with jour- nals and books, curricula and symposia, devoted to its power and ubiquity. We have said that rhetoric is "epistemic," that it affects the conduct of in- quiry and the substance of knowledge across the disciplines. We have com- mitted ourselves to using the powers of rhetoric to meet challenges in the public realm, challenges to social justice, democratic process, public respon- sibility, and civility. Kenneth Burke, in an anaphoric, epanaleptic aphorism we love to quote, told us that "wherever there is persuasion there is rhetoric.
20 Carolyn R. Miller
And wherever there is 'meaning' there is 'persuasion. '"6 Rhetoric's imperialism has reached such a pitch recently that critical alarms have been sounded, urg- ing "attenuations" of its epistemic claims and challenging its ambitions as a "universalized," "promiscuous," "free-floating," "interpretive metadiscourse. "7
Criticism like this helps to counter rhetoric's grand ambitions, but there is another countervailing force, and that is rhetoric's own enduring impulse toward self-denial. Here, rhetoric seeks not to "flourish" or to "reign," but to disappear, to get out of the way, possibly even to admit to being "mere rhet- oric. " The motto for this impulse is that the art of rhetoric lies in concealing the art: ars est artem celare. 8 Rhetorical treatises, beginning at least with Aris- totle, point out the need for rhetorical artifice and strategy to remain hidden: "authors should compose without being noticed and should seem to speak not artificially but naturally. (The latter is persuasive, the former the opposite. )"9 George Kennedy calls this passage "perhaps the earliest statement in criticism that the greatest art is to disguise art. "10 In De Inventione, Cicero noted that brilliance and vivacity of style "can give rise to a suspicion of preparation and excessive ingenuity. As a result of this most of the speech loses conviction and the speaker, authority. "11 Quintilian put the matter plainly: "if an orator does command a certain art . . . , its highest expression will be in the conceal- ment of its existence. "12
Rhetoric, it seems, must deny itself to succeed. Michael Cahn has called this rule "the very heart of rhetoric," right from its beginning. 13 The principle has become embedded in the tradition, a commonplace passed along and kept alive by writers who include Puttenham, La Rochefoucauld, Butler, Swift, Pope, Burke, Rousseau, and Wilde. The principle is modeled for the Renais- sance in Castiglione's concept of sprezzatura, glossed by Richard Lanham as a "rehearsed spontaneity" and described by Castiglione himself as a capacity ensuring that "art is hidden and whatever is said and done seems without effort or forethought. "14 Sprezzatura is celebrated in the English Renaissance from Herrick to Sidney to Shakespeare. 15 Another Renaissance figure who serves for us as the paragon of dissimulation is Machiavelli, who advises the prince that because it is sometimes necessary to do evil, it is also necessary to dissimulate, to construct what we might now call "plausible deniability," so that "everyone sees what you appear to be, [but] few know what you really are. "16 But the principle of rhetorical concealment is more than the everyday dissimulation of intentions: it is the conviction that the means by which intentions are concealed must also remain undetectable; in other words, we must be convinced that no dissimulation is going on; it is a dissimulation of means as much as of ends. Thus, if "all a rhetorician's rules / Teach nothing but to name his tools," it is best if the tools--and their names--remain under wraps when Sir Hudibras sallies forth.
According to Cahn, rhetoric is the only art with this tradition of self-denial, the one art that "has to live with the requirement of concealing its achievement
in order to attain recognition. "17 Indeed, the ancient arts that were often com- pared with rhetoric, such as medicine, cookery, flute-playing, navigation, and gymnastics, do not seem to have much to hide, and neither do such contem- porary arts as engineering or architecture. We can use and appreciate their products or results even if we happen know a great deal about how they are produced, what materials, ingredients, processes, and techniques go into their success. But other arts are different, and these are used by Plato in a series of complex comparisons and classifications that suggest rhetoric's affinity with arts such as cosmetics, seduction, enchantment, hunting, and military strat- egy. 18 Here the story is different, suggesting that Cahn may not be correct about rhetoric's unique need for concealment. Cosmetics, for example, part of Socrates' elaborate comparison of the sham arts and the true arts in the Gor- gias, would seem to require concealment. 19 Like theatrical illusion, the effect of the cosmetic art dissipates the more we know about its part in the creation of beauty. We admire the skill involved in exercising the art rather than the appearance of the wearer, the art itself rather than its results.
If dissimulation and concealment are indeed necessary for rhetorical success, we face a number of problems as we contemplate both the public work of rhetoric and the educational role of rhetoric. If rhetoric can be more effective, more useful, more powerful, if it remains concealed, what can it mean for rhetoric to go public? What can its "public work" be? Is there a self- defeating premise built into the educational project? Or an entailment of ever more widespread cynicism? If, through the sustained rhetorical education and public acceptance we seek, rhetoric is indeed revealed as a Gorgianic power available to everyone, will public discourse or our social conditions actually improve? The dilemma that intrigues me is epitomized in a New Yorker cartoon, where the public work of rhetoric is unconcealed by naming the tools.
In this essay, I spend some time exploring the principle of concealment in more detail, drawing primarily on the multiple ways that it is expressed in the classical tradition, because the ancients were astute observers of the work- ings of rhetorical power, particularly in the public realm. I examine these sources for what they can reveal about the justifications for and consequences of concealment. The sources give some clues to the conditions in which rhet- oric must work and thus the possibilities for its public role. And I close with some observations about what these conditions mean for the relationship be- tween rhetoric's public work and rhetoric's role in the education of citizens for that work.
The classical sources are suffused with observations and advice about the necessity for concealment. 20 They reveal a series of recurring themes that jus- tify the need to conceal the art of rhetoric. These themes seem to derive from two foundational assumptions that are fully naturalized in our understandings
Should We Name the Tools? 21
22 Carolyn R. Miller
? (C) The New Yorker Collection 2000. Alex Gregory from cartoonbank. com. All rights reserved
of how humans use language: an adversarial model of human relations and a mimetic model of language.
Human Relations Are Adversarial
1. The dominant and most frequent theme is one I call suspicion. This theme appears in the passage by Aristotle quoted earlier: artifice is not persuasive, because it makes people suspect "someone plotting against them. "21 We treat the intentions of others as plots against us in a zero-sum game: if you win, I lose. You are likely to be trying to cheat me out of something, to deceive me, so I must be suspicious. Athenian suspicion was embedded into a law against deceiving the democracy, a law justified in Demosthenes' statement to the assembly that "A man can do you no greater injustice than telling lies; for, where the political constitution is based on speeches/words, how can it be safely administered if the words/speeches are false? "22
Two examples from the advice about concealment suggest how pervasive the theme of suspicion is in the classical tradition:
There is an inevitable suspicion attaching to the unconscionable use of figures. It gives a suggestion of treachery, craft, fallacy, especially when your speech is addressed to a judge with absolute authority. . . . So we
find that a figure is always most effective when it conceals the very fact of its being a figure. 23
Care must be taken to avoid exciting any suspicion in this portion
of our speech, and we should therefore give no hint of elaboration in the exordium, since any art that the orator may employ at this point seems to be directed solely at the judge. 24
2. The second theme, spontaneity, identifies the notion that statements we can trust are those that come easily and naturally; conversely, a premeditated statement, one that is obviously crafted and constructed beforehand, deserves our suspicion. For example, the Rhetorica Ad Herennium cautions about the use of certain figures involving word-play: "[such figures] are to be used very sparingly when we speak in an actual cause, because their invention seems impossible without labour and pains.
