Ong,
Fighting
for Life, 26; Hawhee, Bodily Arts, 17.
The Public Work of Rhetoric_nodrm
For both audience and candidate, whatever else integrity is, it is also an appearance. So recursive and reciprocal are our social relations that the pos- sibility for regress is endless. Art must be concealed, and the concealment must be concealed, and likewise that concealment, and so on. We might con- clude that despair is the only recourse--or cynicism.
And this brings us to the problem at hand. What can rhetoric's public role be under these conditions? What can its educational project be? What hap- pens if we teach students to name--and master--the tools? Can rhetoric be useful or powerful if it is revealed--both as a practice and as a discipline? Will public discourse, neighborhoods, civil society, or individual lives fare better
with a revealed or a concealed art of rhetoric? Under endemic conditions of suspicion, can rhetoric help build social trust, the essential adhesive of social relations? Should rhetoric go into the streets in disguise? Perhaps this has already happened--we have concealed rhetoric as composition, as cultural studies, as literature, as literacy, as professional communication. The rhetori- cal arts that have gone public, like advertising, public relations, and political consulting, are often regarded with suspicion, if not disdain, precisely for their emphasis on expedience--on winning. There is an irony here: rhetoric as the unconcealed art of public discourse, as the means for democratic delibera- tion, has been less successful both academically and culturally than these com- mercial arts. As taught in departments of speech and speech communication in the twentieth century, in the general college curriculum in much of the nineteenth century, and sometimes in English composition programs, rheto- ric was indeed the art of public discourse (or public address, as it was often called). But this effort has not led to either academic status or public respect for the discipline.
Rhetoric does have a long history, as Robert Hariman has pointed out, of marginality, of ranking below a variety of other discourses in status compari- sons, notably with philosophy and dialectic and often with poetics. But the margin, as Hariman notes, is essential to the existence of the center; the mar- gin of a society or a psyche "contains what one is but should not be. "74 He also points out that the margin is a "zone of power"--a zone of suppressed potencies. 75 So marginality may be a preferred--or even a necessary--condition for rhetoric, and rhetoric's ability to conceal itself allows it to operate from the margin, to appear natural, centralized, to take form as the real and not the artful, the natural and not the constructed. The margin is also the zone of what cannot be controlled, of the undisciplined, the unsystematizable-- and we know that as an art of the kairos, rhetoric fits this description as well. But disciplines are ostensibly devoted to unconcealment, to elaboration, to systematization, and they do not survive on the margins--they must promote their own centrality in order to survive. Thus we have rhetoric's "globaliza- tion project," as Gaonkar calls it,76 and thus we have rhetoric's dual identity as the queen of the sciences and the harlot of the arts.
Booth's solution to "reducing rhetorical warfare" and improving the state of our public life is in large part an educational one. We need to teach citi- zens to listen, to find common ground, to seek good reasons for changing our minds, and to cooperate in progressing beyond our differences, as well as to respond critically to the "rhetrickery" that surrounds us. 77 This solution re- quires the unconcealment of rhetoric, the naming of the tools. Indeed, rhetori- cal education, rhetorica docens in the scholastic tradition, makes visible our rhetorical practice, rhetorica utens, by naming, analysis, imitation. The topics, the genres, the staseis, the parts of the oration, the causes of the emotions, the fallacies, the schemes and tropes--if learning these (or any other rhetorical
Should We Name the Tools? 31
32 Carolyn R. Miller
canon) is beneficial, this knowledge will make for citizens who can both lis- ten critically and speak and write effectively. But is there not a contradiction here? Can what is revealed in the classroom remain concealed in the public forum? Rhetorica docens must name the tools, rhetorica utens must conceal them. If citizens become more critical judges of rhetorical practice, they should also become more cunning practitioners themselves. Yet the strategies of the cunning practitioner will increasingly be revealed by the increasing critical acuity of the citizen-audience. We seem to have another endless regress, a continual escalation of cunning concealment and critical unmasking. Or per- haps an endless circle around which rhetorica utens and rhetorica docens chase each other.
As I write this, we are in the 2008 presidential election campaign, in which each major candidate represents a position under discussion here: one can- didate promotes his campaign as the "straight talk express," and the other candidate's acknowledged eloquence puts him under suspicion. An election draws public attention to the powers of rhetoric. The editorial pages, politi- cal cartoons, television pundits, talk shows, YouTube offerings, and late-night comedians have been analyzing and satirizing the rhetorical efforts of both candidates, making visible the strategies and styles of their campaigns, alert- ing us to the ways we are being manipulated, and in some cases naming the rhetorical tools explicitly. But as the scholarship makes abundantly clear, the ancient Athenians were in this same place before us. Jon Hesk characterizes Athenian oratory as "crucially concerned with its own modes and techniques of performance in general and deceptive performance in particular. "78 He shows that the extant speeches employ a number of commonplaces of uncon- cealment, which unmask the strategies of an opponent and occasionally, in re- sponse, justify one's own strategies. 79 Further, as Johan Schloemann suggests, Athenian audiences had a conscious appreciation of the strategies and styles of rhetorical performances, an appreciation opposed to their simultaneous distrust of rhetorical ability: they sustained a dynamic ambivalence about rhetoric in which they were both eager to be persuaded and at the same time suspicious of persuasion. 80
Schloemann goes so far as to propose that the Athenians engaged in "two different modes of reception": an "entertainment mode" that, we might say, suspends disbelief, and a "critical mode" that mobilizes disbelief. 81 The dy- namic ambivalence created by these two modes echoes Lanham's notion of the "bi-stable oscillation" between "looking through" and "looking at" a rhe- torical performance. 82 In the entertainment mode, when we "look through" a text the tools and strategies remain concealed and thus can bewitch (or drug or seduce or deceive) us. In the critical mode, when we "look at" the text we unconceal its machinery and thus immunize ourselves to its effects. Schloe- mann insists that the two modes do not represent two segments of the Athen- ian audience but rather two capabilities of the same audience, and Lanham
claims (by analogy with Gestalt psychology's figure/ground dualism) that we oscillate between these two modes of interpretation but cannot engage them simultaneously. When we suspend our disbelief, submitting to the pleasures of rhetorical engagement, we favor the assumption that language is mimetic, and when we mobilize disbelief, maintaining critical distance, we favor the assumption of adversarial relations. The mutually reinforcing nature of these two assumptions necessitates and help sustains the "ambivalence" about which Schloemann speaks and the "bi-stable oscillation" that Lanham describes. If we favor naive mimesis too strongly, we end in despair, and if we favor the adversarial or critical mode too strongly, we end in permanently disengaged cynicism. Realistically, critical unconcealment can be illuminating about the particular case but does not inoculate us permanently against the next mes- merizing speaker or shrewd marketing campaign.
I do not mean here to dismiss rhetoric as a sham art or to reject it in favor of some other, better description of our communicative dilemmas. I mean, rather, to honor the dangers and powers of rhetoric, which the ancients well understood and which our enthusiasm about the revival of rhetoric may sometimes lead us to forget. We cannot, as Garsten says, avoid the "twin dan- gers" of pandering and manipulation that arise from the nature of rhetoric itself. 83 Some theorists have encouraged us to reconceive rhetoric as a coop- erative rather than an adversarial art, Booth prominent among them. At the same time, he confesses his own failures and inabilities in attempting to prac- tice the cooperative listening-rhetoric he preaches. Booth, Burke, Garsten, and Herzog all conclude that practical affairs, the public realm of rhetorica utens, must be dealt with, struggled with, on a case-by-case basis, and that cunning concealment is necessary, dangerous, and morally troubling. I mean as well to urge a realistic attenuation of our hopes for what it is that rhetoric can achieve in public, both in terms of its status as a discipline and in terms of its capabilities to promote the public good. Under endemic conditions of suspi- cion, we need a rhetoric that helps build social trust. But if the assumptions of agonism and mimesis indeed prevail, such a project cannot be a global or a programmatic one: it must be risked one situation at a time.
Notes
I am indebted to Judith Ferster for helpful discussion about the relevance of current polit- ical discourse, to Richard Graff for both primary and secondary sources, and to the mem- bers of a summer writing group at North Carolina State for suggestions on a late draft.
1. Plato, Collected Dialogues, 17a-b. 2. Ibid. , 452d.
3. Cicero, De Oratore, 30.
4. Ibid. , 32.
5. Plato, Collected Dialogues, 456a; see also Aristotle, On Rhetoric, 1. 1. 1, 1. 1. 14. 6. Burke, Rhetoric of Motives, 172.
7. Cherwitz, "Rhetoric"; Gaonkar, "Idea of Rhetoric," 29, 38, 36.
Should We Name the Tools? 33
34 Carolyn R. Miller
8. This is a widely attested Latin phrase that seems to have no specific source in this form. See Taylor, "History. " For two useful discussions of this theme in classical rheto- ric and citations, see Andersen, "Lingua Suspecta"; Cronje? , "Principle of Concealment. "
9. Aristotle, On Rhetoric, 3. 2. 4. 10. Ibid. , 198, n. 18.
11. Cicero, De Inventione, 63. 26.
12. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 1. 11. 3.
13. Cahn, "Rhetoric of Rhetoric," 79.
14. Lanham, Electronic Word, 151.
15. Plett, "Shakespeare. "
16. Michelle Zerba argues that the roots of Machiavelli's prescriptions for the prince
are in Cicero's De Oratore, which she characterizes as "the most fully developed view of the civic leader as one pitched in a heroic battle for preeminence that must rely on the rhetoric of imposture. " Zerba, "Frauds of Humanism," 220.
17. Cahn, "Rhetoric of Rhetoric," 79.
18. See Roochnik, Of Art and Wisdom, App. 3. Roochnik offers a discussion of Plato's many classifications of techne.
19. Plato, Collected Dialogues, 463-65.
20. My collection of about fifty examples of advice about concealing rhetorical art
started from these two footnotes: see Rhetorica Ad Herennium, IV. vii. 10; Cahn, "Rhetoric of Rhetoric," 84, n. 45. Caplan concludes that "the idea is widespread in ancient rheto- ric. " Rhetorica Ad Herrennium, 250.
21. Aristotle, On Rhetoric, 3. 2. 4.
22. Hesk, Deception and Democracy; Demosthenes, On the False Embassy, 19. 184.
23. Longinus, On the Sublime, 17. 1.
24. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 4. 1. 57.
25. Rhetorica Ad Herennium, 4. 22. 32.
26. Longinus, On the Sublime, 18. 2.
27. Cicero, Brutus, 37. 139.
28. Http://www. perseus. tufts. edu/hopper/text? doc=Perseus:text:1999. 01. 0002:
speech=3. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 9. 4. 147.
29. The connection between spontaneity and sincerity means that all the advice about
concealment is also advice about ethos and helps support Aristotle's contention that ethos is, "almost . . . the most authoritative form of persuasion. " Aristotle, On Rhetoric, 1. 2. 4.
30. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 9. 3. 102.
31. Rhetorica Ad Herennium, 2. 30. 47.
32. Alcidamas, On the Sophists, 12.
33. See, for example, Plato, Gorgias, 452; Euthydemus, 290, Sophist, 219-25; Statesman,
304. I have discussed the use of the hunting analogy at length elsewhere. Miller, "Aris- totelian Topos. "
34. Aristotle, On Rhetoric, 1. 1. 12.
35. Cicero, De Oratore, 1. 8. 32.
36. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 7. 10. 17.
37.
Ong, Fighting for Life, 26; Hawhee, Bodily Arts, 17. 38. Consigny, Gorgias, 75.
39. Poulakos, Sophistical Rhetoric, 37.
40. Zerba, "Frauds of Humanism. " 41. Cicero, De Inventione, 1. 15. 20.
42. Ibid. , 1. 17. 24.
43. Rhetorica Ad Herennium, 1. 7. 11.
44. Burke, Rhetoric of Motives, 19.
45. Gorgias, "Encomium of Helen"; Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By.
46. Tannen, Argument Culture, 3, 4.
47. Ibid. , 284.
48. Booth, Rhetoric of Rhetoric, 43-50.
49. Toulmin, Cosmopolis; Garsten, Saving Persuasion. Garsten focuses on the political
thought of Hobbes, Rousseau, and Kant, whose rhetoric against rhetoric aimed to pro- tect the modern state from the contentiousness of public judgment.
50. Sophocles, Philoctetes, 1052.
51. Kastely, Rethinking the Rhetorical Tradition, 88. 52. Herzog, Cunning, 24-25.
53. Campbell, Philosophy, 216, 221.
54. Gaonkar, "Object," 298.
55. Andersen, "Lingua Suspecta," 79. The mimetic principle also operates in the visual arts. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pygmalion falls in love with the statue of his own cre- ation because the excellence of his art creates a perfect representation of reality, per- suading even its creator by its mimetic power. Ovid concludes, "ars adeo latet arte sua" (so does his art conceal his art). Ovid, Metamorphoses, 10. 252.
56. David, "Correspondence Theory. "
57. Paradis, "Bacon, Linnaeus, and Lavoisier. "
58. See, for example, Ballif, Seduction; Consigny, Gorgias; Kerferd, Sophistic Movement. 59. Closely related to the mimetic principle is what Michael Reddy has called "the
conduit metaphor" for communication, the idea that an unproblematic "message" can be neutrally (mimetically) "encoded" and "transmitted" to a "receiver," and he shows how deeply this set of assumptions is embedded in our language about language. Reddy, "Conduit Metaphor. "
60. Aristotle, On Rhetoric, 3. 7. 9.
61. Longinus, On the Sublime, 22. 1.
62. Dionysius, Critical Essays, 8.
63. Aeschines, "Against Ctesiphon," 3. 99. As Hesk notes, Aeschines' complaint distin-
guishes two levels or types of deceit: the detectable and the undetectable. Hesk, Decep- tion and Democracy, 238.
64. This is different from what Hesk calls "the rhetoric of anti-rhetoric," which con- sists of explicit attacks on the deceptiveness of speech, or one's opponent's speech, rather than the denial of one's own rhetoric. Hesk, Deception and Democracy.
65. Julius Caesar, III: ii.
66. Plutarch, Moralia, 17.
67. Herzog, Cunning, 95.
68. Sprat, History, Sect. 20.
69. Consigny has also made this point, noting that such "seemingly neutral dis-
course" is usually hegemonic. Consigny, "Rhetorical Concealment. "
70. Lanham, Electronic Word, 110; see also his discussion of the work of zoologist Richard Alexander, who aimed to explain why "hypocrisy evolved as the primary hu-
man attribute" (58).
71. Burke, Rhetoric of Motives, 22. 72. Herzog, Cunning, 121.
73. Ibid. , 84, 121.
Should We Name the Tools? 35
36 Carolyn R. Miller
74. Hariman, "Status," 44.
75. Ibid. , 48.
76. Gaonkar, "Idea of Rhetoric"; see also Cahn's discussion of rhetoric's disciplinary
status, "Rhetoric of Rhetoric. "
77. Booth, Rhetoric of Rhetoric, 149.
78. Hesk, Deception and Democracy, 203-4. 79. Ibid. , 227ff.
80. Schloemann, "Entertainment. " 81. Ibid. , 144.
82. Lanham, Electronic Word.
83. Garsten, Saving Persuasion, 2.
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