The Blogora

July 19, 2005

Eloquence

A random thought, after reading Jean Starobinski, "Eloquence and Liberty," Journal of the History of Ideas 38, 2 (April-June 1977): 195-210:

Has the term "eloquence" largely dropped out of 20th/21st century rhetorical theory? If so, why? Here's another one of my top 5 games: name the 5 most eloquent pieces of rhetoric (broadly defined):

Letter from Birmingham Jail
FDR, 1st Inaugural
Lincoln, 2nd Inaugural
Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto
Mill, On Liberty

or should we limit it to speeches? And, what do you think "eloquence" is?

Posted by jim at 03:21 PM | Comments (3)

July 06, 2005

Textbooks

Tomorrow morning I'm off to San Francisco as part of a junket (I feel just like Tom DeLay) sponsored by a textbook publisher. About 10 teachers of public speaking are going to meet for two days in a posh hotel to be a focus group for improving textbooks.

There are a number of really good rhetoric and composition textbooks out there, reflecting the seriousness with which our English comrades take pedagogy. There is not, to put it bluntly, a single public speaking text that is worth the price. When I teach Honors Public Speaking (the only version I get to teach these days) I usually put together a packet of readings or else use Karlyn Campbell's The Rhetorical Act. What I can't figure out is why publishers think that these texts need to be so visually stimulating. I wonder if a better alternative might not be some kind of computer software, an expanded and improved version of powerpoint, that included examples and exercises for audience analysis, outlining, evidence, reasoning, and delivery--the delivery part could work like foreign language cd-roms now, with audio files of correct pronunciation.

I guess one of the reasons why these texts are so bad is that a significant number of the teachers of the basic course are graduate students who themselves lack sufficient skills in oral performance to design a unique course adapted to their university. The texts thus need to be recipe-like in order to make it easier to lecture and do assignments.

Any thoughts?

Posted by jim at 10:29 PM | Comments (4)

May 31, 2005

More on the SAT Writing Exam

More commentary on the new SAT writing exam.

I still think we rhetoricians need more of a concerted public relations effort on this and other educational issues. Learn from Karl Rove:

1. Stay on message
2. In your face
3. Protect your base

Posted by jim at 08:01 PM | Comments (0)

May 27, 2005

It's the Brain. . . .

I find this study of London cab drivers immensely comforting, for some reason.

Another discussion:

The study "compared the brains of London taxi cab drivers with non-taxi drivers. London is a very old city. Its buildings were built around very old streets and closes. Thus, navigation in London is more challenging than a city like New York whose streets have been laid out in a grid or matrix. London taxi drivers must apprentice for at least two years and then pass rigorous police examinations before they can be licensed. This period is colloquially termed ‘Being on the Knowledge.’ The driver must develop extraordinary spatial navigational skills to be able to accommodate his passenger’s requests. Most drivers can not only find the most arcane location, but can describe the scenery and history of the sites en route. Brain scans of the taxi drivers pre and post apprenticeship and over long terms of duty revealed that their brains had changed from their peers. A region of the hippocampus, center of memory, emotion, and learning, had nearly doubled in size compared to others who had not undergone training. As I’ve noted previously, the constant reorganization and changes in the connections between linked neurons in the brain is termed neuroplasticity. New neural connections are actually made through the mechanism of axonal sprouting where axons grow new nerve endings to reconnect the neurons. Particular to the hippocampus, the center of memory, emotion, and learning in the brain, axons can also sprout nerve endings and connect with other neurons to form new neural pathways. While new connections can form quickly, the process must be initiated by appropriate challenge/stimulation. The extraordinary challenge provided to the taxi drivers during their apprenticeships resulted in the increased development of posterior sections of their hippocampi. The study suggests that the growth became greater in correlation to the time spent on the job or "On the Knowledge.'"

Learning matters, and it restructures our neural networks. Grounds for optimism at a time when we seem to be regressing from post-modernism to pre-modernism.

Posted by jim at 11:48 AM | Comments (0)

May 17, 2005

More on the SAT Writing Exam

Whatever motives you may ascribe to those who inflict the SAT, one point is salient, says Perelman. "We're one of the few developed countries in the world where such testing is done by private agencies with no supervision by a public or quasi-public organization. It's very much as if we allowed drug companies to market drugs without the FDA. To quote Juvenal in his sixth Satire: Who watches the watchmen?"

That's the conclusion; the rest is here.

Would it be a good thing if writing teachers in RSA weighed in when events like this happened? Do we need a public relations officer of some sort? Or does NCTE do the work sufficiently? (I know NCA doesn't.) Some day I will have sufficient courage to blog about the Chronicle of Higher Ed. article that covered the ARS conference; what was anyone thinking (rhetorically, that is)?

Posted by jim at 06:41 PM | Comments (1)

May 08, 2005

Teacher, Reader, Coach

This week's NYTimes Book Review includes a non-commissioned remembrance of Frank Conroy, who died in April. Among his other lifeworks, Conroy directed the Iowa Writers' Workshop from 1987 until earlier this year. The title of James Salters' essay, "The Writing Teacher," got me rather excited just on the face of it, as it were; I was trained to teach writing, in my responses at least, by being "teacher, reader, and coach." My undergraduate degree was in English--Writing Option. Good friends past and present in Rhetoric at Iowa were also in my head and heart as I read Salters' remembrance, and I wondered again why Rhetoric and "Creative Writing" are so often at opposite ends of the same zero-sum games in universities' colleges of lib'ral arts ... and liberal arts and sciences:

"Iowa City, along its river, is a beautiful town. There are brick-lined streets in a neighborhood called Goosetown, once Czech, where geese were kept in the deep backyards. Ample old houses remain and huge trees. Downtown there are wide streets, restaurants, shops and a wonderful bookstore, Prairie Lights, but the chief business is really the University of Iowa, within which, small but renowned, lies its jewel, the Writers' Workshop. Originally established in 1936, the workshop is the pre-eminent writing school in the country, although it is almost universally believed that writing cannot be taught, and in fact it is not really taught there; it is practiced. Kurt Vonnegut, one in the long list of famous writers who have been on the workshop's faculty, liked to say he couldn't teach people to write but, like an old golf pro, he could go around with them and perhaps take a few strokes off their game...."

If writing teachers -- or composition teachers -- sometimes productively understand themselves as teachers, readers, and coaches, how do speech/speaking/communication teachers understand the different roles they play when they respond to student discourses? My sense is that "communication theory" -- or "science," as the non-humanities part of the field is often described here -- changes those roles significantly....

Meanwhile, how does Aune's last post make all of this irrelevant?!

Posted by rhosa at 07:49 PM | Comments (1)

May 04, 2005

Survey Course Reading Suggestions?

I'm teaching a history of rhetoric graduate class from classical to 1900 this fall (cross-listed in English and Comm). It's pretty easy for me to come up with books/readings for ancient Greece, Rome, and the early Christian periods. For the rest of the course I'm just not sure; I could probably just do a reading packet, but I'm asking for suggestions for canonical primary texts and pedagogically useful books for the later periods.

To clarify: we have a Plato-to-NATO course in COMM that's required of all our graduate students, and then we have these two other cross-listed classes that break up the tradition at 1900, which I think is sensible.

Posted by jim at 06:19 PM | Comments (11)

NCTE on SAT/ACT Writing Tests

The National Council of Teachers of English weighed in this week on the new writing tests added to the SAT and ACT.

As insidehighered.com puts it:

The new writing tests that have been added to both the SAT and the ACT:
A. Are unlikely to predict success in college writing.
B. Will send high school writing instruction in the wrong direction.
C. Reward those who write “conventional truisms and platitudes about life.”
D. All of the above.

Posted by jim at 05:48 PM | Comments (0)

May 01, 2005

Philosophical Strategies and Exempla

I've been fascinated for a long time by the rhetorical dynamics of philosophers' thought experiments, especially in the analytic tradition--e.g. Rawl's veil of ignorance or Judith Jarvis Thomson's violinist/abortion analogy. Here's one from Daniel Dennett's new Sweet Dreams. The first stage of the argument was by Frank Jackson in 1986: Mary, a fictional neuroscientist, is stuck within a black and white world. She knows everything there is to know about the science of color perception, but she has never seen a single color. One day she is shown a red rose. Then, and only then, does she know what red looks like.

Or does she? If tale is accurate, there are aspects of consciousness not reducible to neural activity. Hence Searle and other recent critics of "strong" AI.

Dennett responds that Mary need not have seen the rose in order to know what red looks like. Real learning means an alteration of the mind's neural networks; this alteration can occur without her actually seeing the rose. If her experience does provide real learning, then it does this by altering her mind -- that is, her brain.

Add RoboMary into the mix. She is a brilliant neuroscientist, but is actually better than Mary, because she can program herself with the required knowledge of what colors look like, and thus not be surprised when she is shown the rose.

--I guess this is an argument from analogy, but of a very special sort. Any thoughts on how this or similar arguments work? A recurring feature of audience reaction (at least when I have described the Rawls or Thomson arguments in class--or how Habermas derives his counterfactual ideal speech situation, for that matter) is a sense that an illegitimate premise has been smuggled in somewhere.

--A perhaps related observation: during an MA thesis exam in philosophy a few years ago I (as outside committee member and totally ignorant of the thesis topic) bewilderingly asked the student and other committee members at one point: "Um, don't philosophers have a conception of presumption and burden of proof?" "No," they all said. "Ah," I said, trying to look wise. . . .

Posted by jim at 06:06 AM | Comments (0)

April 12, 2005

"Academic Freedom Under Fire"

Below is a link to an article in the journal Daedalus by former Columbia University Provost Jonathan Cole in which he analyses the current academic freedom case.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/univprof/jcole/_pdf/2005AcademicFreedom.pdf

Makes me think, again, about Andrea's "trope" of the "war zone"....

Thanks to Dana Cloud for forwarding this, as I'm thinking about what to do about "Public Spaces on Campus."

We need to figure out how to set up an Inventional Space on The Blogora, where folks can send us stuff ... until we can figure out Blogoratopia.... Suggestions???

Posted by rhosa at 08:43 PM | Comments (0)

April 05, 2005

Syllabus Search

Here's a cool websearch tool for locating course syllabi.

Posted by jim at 10:10 PM | Comments (0)

April 02, 2005

1947 Project

During my convalescence from bronchitis this week I reverted to my favorite reading matter: Raymond Chandler. (In my spare time, I keep trying to work on an "academic noir" novel.) In searching for some online information about him I ran across this really nifty website, the 1947 Project. It represents the best, I think, of what the Web can give us. Here's its purpose statement:

Los Angeles in 1947 was a social powderkeg. War-damaged returning soldiers were threatened by a new kind of independant female, who in turn found her freedoms disappearing as male workers returned to the factories. These conflicts worked themselves out in dark ways. The Black Dahlia is the most famous victim of 1947's sex wars, but hardly the only one. The 1947project seeks to document this pivotal year in L.A., through period reporting and visits to the scenes as they are today.

Posted by jim at 07:58 PM | Comments (0)

Rhetoric and Poetic

One of the wonderful things about the Rhetoric Society of America is that it has created a space for rhetoricians in English and Communication (and elsewhere) to meet and compare perspectives. Steve Mailloux and others have commented in RSQ about the similarities and differences between the two "fields." One topic that emerges out of our shared "topos" is the relationship between rhetoric and poetic (or is "poetics"?). As I was doing one of my summary/transition lectures going into the last unit of my big rhetorical theory class today, I had a little epiphany. Perhaps, like all generalizations about the vast undiscovered country of the history of rhetoric, it's a little too easy, but I'm going to throw it out there for discussion.

Rhetoric and poetic are deeply linked in ancient Greece--perhaps even more closely than previously thought, thanks to Jeffrey Walker's provocative work.

Same for Rome--Quintilian taught Juvenal, for example, and the poetic of Horace is a "rhetorical" poetic.

The rediscovery of rhetoric in the Renaissance, both in Italy and in England, is inextricably connected with poetic as well--see, for example, Joel Altman's Tudor Play of Mind or Thomas Sloane's On the Contrary.

The connection of rhetoric and "belles lettres" in the Scottish Enlightenment is clear as well.

But what about the 20th century? Although Kenneth Burke combines the two (what are they, anyway? disciplines, habits of mind?), there has been no poetic counterpart to the New Rhetorics. The New Rhetorics had no larger cultural impact in ways that the previous ones did. Does that matter? I'm inclined to think that it does, and that perhaps when we get our act together with a genuinely new 21st century it might have important consequences for the practice of poetic--broadly defined--as well.

Posted by jim at 01:36 AM | Comments (2)

March 26, 2005

Rhetorical Concepts V: Richard Weaver

Richard Weaver (1910-1963): The study of rhetoric as a cure for the cultural crisis engendered by science, industrial capitalism, and “mass” education/communication.

I. Life:
A. Grew up in Asheville, NC, and Lexington, KY. Attended U of Kentucky, where he joined the Socialist Party.
B. Attended Vanderbilt, where he studied with the Southern Agrarians (I’ll Take My Stand) John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate. They argued against modern science and industrial capitalism, defended an agriculture-based society like that of the Old South (but without slavery).
C. Taught at TAMU from 1937-1939, where he “encountered a rampant philistinism, abetted by technology, large-scale organization, and a complacent acceptance of success as the goal of life. Moreover, I was here forced to see that the lion of applied science and the lamb of the humanities were not going to lie down together in peace, but that the lion was going to devour the lamb unless there was a very stern keeper of order.” As he drove back to College Station in the fall of 1939 he realized he didn’t have to go back, and instead turned around and enrolled at LSU for his PHD.
D. Taught at U of Chicago for many years, primarily lower-level writing courses (which he enthusiastically volunteered for). Author of Composition: A Course in Reading and Writing (1957); Ideas Have Consequences (1948); The Ethics of Rhetoric (1953); and Visions of Order (1964).
E. Helped found Modern Age and National Review, as well as the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (publisher of Intercollegiate Review—if you want a free subscription, ask me). Like Russell Kirk (The Conservative Mind), he was a supporter of the “traditionalist” wing of American conservatism, as opposed to “libertarians” and “fusionists,” who were most concerned about free enterprise and anti-Communism, respectively. Traditionalists believe the central problem facing us today is cultural decay.

II. Some core ideas:
A. Defense of rhetoric:
1. “Language is sermonic”: a critique of the social-scientific, journalistic, and general semantics view that you can have neutral, “objective,” “scientific” communication. ALL acts of communication take a point of view and attempt to persuade

2. Healthy cultures have a balance of dialectic and rhetoric. “Dialectic is abstract reasoning on the basis of propositions; rhetoric is the relation of the terms of these to the existential world in which facts are regarded with sympathy and are treated with that kind of historical understanding and appreciation which lie outside the dialectical process” (Visions of Order, 56). Education or journalism that is only negative, always questioning assumptions is destructive.
3. My favorite definition of rhetoric (from his essay on the Phaedrus): “So rhetoric at its truest seeks to perfect men by showing them better versions of themselves, links in that chain leading up to the ideal, which only the intellect can apprehend and only the soul have affection for. This is the truly justified affection of which no one can be ashamed, and he who feels no influence of it is truly outside the communion of minds. Rhetoric appears, finally, as a means by which the impulse of the soul to be ever moving is redeemed.”
B. A healthy culture:
1. Has a “tyrannizing image”: the idea of a culture’s excellence, embodied in ritual, scripture, literature, codes of conduct, enforced standards of value and exclusion: “A culture integrates by segregating its forms of activity and its members from those not belonging.” Culture satisfies a deep-seated psychic need. (Note that TAMU has the lowest crime/violence rate of any US university.)
2. A healthy culture has style: recognized in:
a. Elaboration: more than the merely functional—it is “over the top” in some way
b. Rhythm: clear marking of beginnings and endings
c. Distance: a sense of grandeur, monuments, courtesy

C. Types of argument:
1. Argument from definition: analysis of Lincoln: In dealing with slavery, other leaders looked to law, American history, or practical expediency. Lincoln asked: “is the negro a man?” William F. Buckley’s favorite definition of conservatism: “The true conservative is one who sees the universe as a paradigm of essences, of which the phenomenology of the world is a sort of continuing approximation.”
2. Argument from circumstance: basing conclusions on standards such as: will it work, is it useful? Analysis of Edmund Burke, who argued against firm principles in politics (the attack on Burke was part of a debate in American conservatism in the 1950's about the relevance of English conservativism to the American experience).
3. The abortion debate is a classic example of a conflict between argument from definition and argument from circumstance.

Posted by jim at 03:37 PM | Comments (0)

March 19, 2005

Rhetorical Concepts IV: Hermeneutics

I. Meaning of "hermeneutics":
A. Greek word "hermeneia"=
1. Interpretation by "speech" itself, since language interprets what is in a person's mind.
2. Translation from an unintelligible language into an intelligible one (e.g. the hermeneia of tongues in I Cor. 12:10)
3. Interpretation by commentary and explanation.
4. Note the connection with the god Hermes.
B. Issues:
1. Does "original intent" matter? Or the "significance" to readers in future contexts? How creative may the interpreter be?
2. What about texts with alleged divine AND human authorship? Is there a deeper principle for framing interpretation, e.g. Luther's distinction between identifying the "law" and the "gospel" in every biblical text?
3. Does every act of human communication involve, to a greater or lesser degree, the "hermeneutic" problem?
4. The hermeneutic circle? (Schleiermacher, 19th c. German theologian, taught that in order to interpret part of a text one must understand the whole text, and vice versa.)

C. Current debates:
1. E.D. Hirsch: "meaning" and "significance" must be distinguished in textual interpretation; Hirsch famously said "I do not wish to be part of an enterprise in which it is impossible to be wrong," and so one can, as part of literary study, reconstruct through historical evidence the author's "meaning" as "intention."
2. H-G. Gadamer: interpretation is a "fusion of horizons" between text and interpreter--the reader "goes native" in the text.
3. Derrida: texts are profoundly unstable entities in which the authorial intention is often subverted by choice of figures or examples.
4. In US constitutional law, there is an ongoing struggle between those who rely on original intent, text (plain meaning), and institutional structure to construe the constitutional text, and those who treat the constitution as an "evolving" entity, more like the common law itself--adapting to new circumstances through creative application by judges. On these issues, see especially Philip Bobbitt, Constitutional Fate.

II. The Jewish tradition:
A. Distinction between guide to action (halakhah, the "way" or "path"), which is seldom revisable or adaptable to new circumstances; and the actual biblical narratives, which were interpreted very freely: midrash (creative interpretation, for preaching purposes).
B. Example: Numbers 25: 6-13. The men are busy whoring with the Moabite women. and the women entice the Israelites to worship Baal-peor, their false god. ."One of the Israelites came and brought a Midianite woman over to his companions, in the sight of Moses and of the whole Israelite community who were weeping at the entrance of the tent of meeting. When Pinchas [the name means "Nubian," or "Negro," interestingly enough], son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, saw this, he left the assembly and, taking a spear in hand, he followed the Israelite into the chamber and stabbed both of them, the Israelite and the woman, through the belly. Then the plague against the Israelites was checked. . . . Hashem spoke to Moses saying, 'Pinchas, the son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the Israelites by displaying among them his passion for me, so that I did not wipe out the Israelite people in my passion. Say, therefore, 'I grant him my pact of friendship. It shall be for him and his descendants after him a pact of priesthood for all time, because he took impassioned action for Hashem, thus making expiation for the Israelites." One rabbinic commentator, troubled by the brutality of the passage, claims that Pinchas knew that this man and woman were "beshert," that is, soul mates for all eternity, and killed them immediately that they might be together forever.

III. Medieval Christian tradition:
A. Familiar couplet:
Littera gesta docet; quit credas allegoria;
moralis quid agas; quo tendas anagogia
B. Four senses; useful as a way of generating sermon ideas
1. Literal: Moses leading the people Israel through the Sea of Reeds
2. Allegorical: "Prophecies" the Christian notion of "baptism"
3. Moral: How has the congregation personally been led out of danger into salvation?
4. Anagogical or eschatological: This passage prefigures our live in Heaven, the "Promised Land." [In his Rhetoric of Motives, Kenneth Burke discusses the notion of "socio-anagogic" interpretation, in which a literary work is seen to symbolize the resolution of class conflicts.]

IV. The Protestant Reformers:
A. Attacked excessive allegorical interpretation (although believed that events in the Hebrew Bible did prefigure the "New" Testament). (Anglicans were less troubled by allegorical interpretation, and elaborate speculations about the biblical text.)
B. Emphasized the "literal" and "moral" sense.
C. Puritans' attitude toward the literal and emphasis on the "plain style" affected their preaching and, later, the attitude of many early Americans toward the notion of a written constitution, which they wanted free from the interpretive chicanery of lawyers (who were viewed much like the overly ingenious Catholic and Anglican preachers).
D. We are thus, as Sanford Levinson points out in Constitutional Faith, fighting out a battle between "Catholic" and "Protestant" interpretation.

Posted by jim at 05:28 PM | Comments (0)

The Lost Canon Revisited

Slate has a good article on the Memory championship, with references to Simonides and the use of visual imagery to train the memory.

Those of you classical rhetoricians in Blogora-land: I'm curious if Frances Yates' The Art of Memory is pretty much the last word on the history of memoria, or if there is more scholarly work to do.

Posted by jim at 11:06 AM | Comments (3)

March 13, 2005

Multimodally Yourn

Letter to the Editor, in today's NYTimes:

The Art of Speaking

To the Editor:

Re "Topic: Essays Are Useful. Discuss," by Curtis Sittenfeld (Op-Ed, March 6):

Now we have a wake-up call about the importance of writing. Way back in history, the 3 R's included this important skill. In an ideal world we should add a fourth "R," for rhetoric.

The way students present themselves through the spoken word, as well as the written word, is probably one of the greatest indicators of future success.

Susan Danow
Suffern, N.Y., March 6, 2005....

This letter by Danow -- who Googles out to be a teacher at a private school in Westchester County -- is but a drop in the responsebucket to Sittenfeld's essay; H-rhetor (http://www.h-net.org/~rhetor) had a "robust" discussion of Sittenfeld's column earlier this week, thanks to David Gold's posting it. Do check it out in the archives. Despite its cheerleading for rhetoric, this letter reminds me that teaching and assessment strategies -- "pedagogies" -- can be awful in more than one "mode" simultaneously.

Posted by rhosa at 01:09 PM | Comments (1)

March 08, 2005

How to Teach About Global Civil Society?

Our Honors Program in the College of Liberal Arts has an interesting program: each year there is a two-course sequence (Fall, Spring) on a single topic (junior-level) with a "humanist" teaching the fall course and a social scientist teaching the spring course. Patrick Burkart, who does telecommunication policy here, is the social scientist and I'm, er, the humanist (even if I actually think I'm a social scientist. . . .). The topic we decided on is "Global Civil Society." It seemed like a great idea when we proposed it, but now I'm freaking out a little because book orders are due, and I'm not sure what to assign, other than a little early Habermas on the public sphere.

Any wisdom out there in Blogora-Land about how I might teach this, and what readings I might assign?

Posted by jim at 07:01 PM | Comments (6)

March 04, 2005

Concepts in Rhetoric III: Kenneth Burke

A. Representative anecdote: academic fields are competing “stories” (anecdotes) about what “man” is: a creature who responds to rewards and punishment (behavioral psych), a utility-maximizer (econ), political or power-seeking animal (poli sci), and so on. KB proposed that the “representative” human anecdote is DRAMA: we tell stories and get involved in personal, familial, and social dramas. That is what makes us human. Reducing us to stimulus-response or brain chemistry or utility-maximizing doesn’t capture what is uniquely human. Burke’s system of thought is often called “dramatism.”
B. Terministic screens: every vocabulary is simultaneously a selection, reflection, and deflection of reality.The first question a student of communication now asks when approaching an interpersonal conflict, an organization, a public controversy: “How is it framed?” Burke taught us to examine the conflicting basic stories parties to a controversy tell about the world.
Even philosophies are different forms of dramatic framing, as his famous “Pentad” in Grammar shows:
1. A well-roundedaccount of human motives would take into account Act, Scene, Agent, Agency, and Purpose.
2. Pentad: [compare to internal/external locus of control or attribution theory in social psychology]
a. Scene=determinism (Karl Marx, sociobiology)
b. Agent=idealism (Emerson, Ayn Rand)
c. Agency=pragmatism (Dewey, Posner)
d. Purpose=mysticism (Hegel, Plato)
e. Act=realism (taking all parts into account) (Aristotle, Aquinas)
3. Example: A 12-year-old Bryan boy from a poor family kills a little old lady on the street with a handgun. The community is outraged. Different “frames” of the event seem to split along the pentadic lines:
a. “He’s a product of his environment”
b. “My father was poor and he didn’t kill people; the kid is responsible”
c. “I don’t know who’s at fault, but shouldn’t we do something about the easy availability of guns to teens?”
d. “It just goes to show the hand of Satan in our lives.”

C. From Persuasion to Identification:
1. How does the persuade “identify” with his audience? “I was a farmboy myself.”
2. Are there “unconscious” identifications: the President as Father, the German people as passive female “wooed” by the seductive Hitler
3. Is the rhetor somehow "above" the audience, making for "social mystery"? How does rhetoric mystify, "eulogistically covering" less attractive motives.
D. Term analysis:
1. Structure analysis: what follows what, and why?
a. Identify all progressions--key terms, images, ideas, emotions, attitudes, places, people, things, etc.
b. Identify the overall form of the discourse--syllogistic, qualitative, repetitive, conventional--and minor, or incidental, forms.
“Form . . . is an arousing and fulfillment of desires. A work has form in so far as one part of it leads a reader to anticipate another part, to be gratified by the sequence.” KB, Counter-Statement
2. Cluster analysis: what goes with what, and why?
a. Make an index of significant terms--terms of high intensity or frequency: god terms, devil terms, ultimate terms, "terministic screens"
b. Make a concordance of significant terms--i.e., identify the context in which terms appear, as a way of finding out what they mean by finding out what the speaker associates them with; try "joycing" terms (punning with them) to reveal unconscious motivation
3. Agon analysis: what goes against what, and why? Identify dramatic alignments: what terms, images, ideas, emotions, attitudes, places, people, things are opposed to each other.
E. The archetypal drama (from his study of Hitler):
1. The mass movements of the 20th century (Nazism, Communism) are “parodies” of religion (they provide substitute gods, rituals, creeds, and so on).
2. Human beings seem to be programmed to respond to a core dramatic pattern:
a. Pollution
b. Guilt
c. Purification—either through Victimage (scapegoating) or Mortification (self-discipline)
d. Redemption
F. The purposes of studying Rhetoric:
1. “the purification of war”—ad bellam purificandum (the motto of the Grammar). Like the General Semanticists or I.A. Richards, he wants to improve understanding, but not by depriving us of the power of language, which makes us human. He wants us to see how we “create” reality through our symbolic action: “there is no place for purely human boasts of grandeur, or for forgetting that men build their cultures by huddling together, nervously loquacious, at the edge of an abyss” (Permanence and Change)
2. Studying rhetoric makes us less vulnerable to people like Hitler, by helping us step back and analyze our need for drama.
3. A Dramatistic frame for analyzing human action enables us to appreciate our distinctive humanity (as the “symbol-using animal”) and be less subservient to Big Science and Big Technology (which have their own unexamined “representative anecdotes”).
4. To promote a “Comic Frame” and a spirit of “tolerance and contemplation.”

Posted by jim at 06:41 PM | Comments (0)

March 03, 2005

Imitatio?

Editor Matthew Rothschild's "Hidden Passages" in March 2005's THE PROGRESSIVE seems rich for use in rhetoric classrooms. Follow the hyperlink or read Rothschild's take on Bush's Second Inaugural below....

The Hidden Passages in Bush's Inaugural Address

Bush's Inaugural Address contained many explicit references to God, but there were even more hidden allusions to the Bible that may have been lost to many in his audience, as they were to me, before I did some research[, with help from Dan Barker of the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the Internet website BibleGateway.com, and I discovered a subtext of his speech].

The subtle subtext of his speech carries with it a profoundly disturbing message about the separation of church and state in this country.

Here are a few of the hidden passages.

When Bush thanked the American people for granting him patience in "good measure," he was echoing Luke 6:38, "Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure. . . ."

When Bush talked of the "ideals of justice and conduct that are the same yesterday, today, and forever," he was echoing Hebrews 13:8, which says, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever."

When Bush talked about the "untamed fire of freedom" in a passage that included the phrase "hope kindles hope," he was echoing passages from Jeremiah. For instance, Jeremiah 17:27 says: "I will kindle an unquenchable fire in the gates of Jerusalem." And Jeremiah 50:32 says: "I will kindle a fire in her towns that will consume all who are around her."

There are many other passages in the Bible that have a raging fire in them. For instance, Isaiah 33:14: "The sinners in Zion are terrified; trembling grips the godless: 'Who of us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who of us can dwell with everlasting burning?' "

When Bush talked about the day when "the captives are set free," he was echoing Ephesians 4:7-9, which says: "He led the captives free."

When Bush talked about the day "the unjust encounter justice," he was echoing Job 27, which states, "May my enemies be like the wicked, my adversaries like the unjust." (This section of Job says that the unjust and the wicked and the ruthless will meet a grisly fate: "However many his children, their fate is the sword; his offspring will never have enough to eat.")

When Bush talked about the need to "surround the lost with love," he was echoing the parable of the lost sheep in Luke 15.

When Bush said, "History also has a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty," he was being none too subtle. But he was also alluding to Acts 3:15 ("You killed the author of life") and Hebrews 12:2 ("Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith").

Toward the end, when Bush said, "Freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul," he was echoing Psalm 107: "For He satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with goodness. Such as sit in darkness. . . ."

In these passages, Bush may have been intent on reassuring his evangelical base that he is one of them.

But in the process, he was also doing something dangerous to our democracy.

Our First Amendment says that there shall be "no establishment of religion." In his speech, Bush was clearly establishing religion. He was denying a place in the United States for those without faith. And while he waved at those of other faiths, his repeated allusions were mostly to the Christian Bible.

If you follow his metaphors and allusions to their logical ends, you realize that Bush was cloaking our secular values of freedom and liberty and justice in distinctly Christian garb.

"The Author of Liberty" is "The Author of Life," and that author is Jesus.

The "ideals of justice and conduct" equate with Jesus, since both are "the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow."

Both freedom and Jesus satisfy the hunger and the longing of the soul.

For Bush, they are one and the same.

In his America, there is no distinction between our public, secular values and his private, religious faith.

For those who don't share his faith-and for those who do but who also appreciate the need to separate church from state-America is becoming an increasingly inhospitable place.

-- Matthew Rothschild
The Progressive magazine

[ ] = text in the print but not in the online version of this discourse --rx

Posted by rhosa at 06:35 PM | Comments (0)

March 02, 2005

Texas Independence Day?

Anyone want to post any accounts of what happened where you were on Texas Independence Day? I hear there were int'resting goings-on all about the Farty Acres. Love and strife, baby: Love and Strife.

I'll post some links as I find 'em. Meanwhile, diga me.

Posted by rhosa at 09:52 PM | Comments (2)

March 01, 2005

Rhetorical Concepts II: Perelman/Olbrechts-Tyteca

A few weeks ago I suggested that the Blogora periodically introduce key concepts/theories in rhetorical studies. Here is an outline of some key aspects of Chaim Perelman/Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca's The New Rhetoric.

Chaim Perelman (1912-1984), professor at the University of Brussels; Olbrechts-Tyteca (1900-1987), research associate.
A. Method:
1. Rejection of logical positivism (truth=formal proof or empirical verification by scientific method) for leaving value choices in the realm of interests, passions, prejudices, and myths.
2. Rejection of an a priori scheme in favor of analysis of cases of successful argument.
3. Rhetoric and dialectic are a single whole for them: dialectic as the theory of techniques of argument, and rhetoric as a practical discipline indicating how to use them to persuade people. Definition: “the study of the discursive techniques allowing us to induce or to increase the mind’s adherence to the theses presented for its assent.”
4. Causes of the decline of rhetoric [note the implicit death-resurrection metaphor]
a. Ramism
b. “bourgeois” thought’s emphasis on “evidence” [i.e. inartistic proof], including both the personal evidence of salvation required by Protestantism and the “sensible evidence” of empiricism
B. Audience:
1. “the ensemble of those whom the speaker wishes to influence by his argumentation” ; note that this is a mental construct
2. Particular vs. universal audience: “those who are competent and reasonable.” The universal audience is “every reasonable being”; each speaker has a different conception of the universal audience, as do different cultures and time periods. Works as an inventional tool as well as a norm for differentiating good and bad arguments. [I would be inclined to redescribe this as the “reasonable person” test in the common law, or perhaps as the difference between Kantian Moralitaet and Hegelian Sittlichkeit]
3. Philosophy emerges out of the epideictic genre of oratory, which seeks to strengthen a consensus around certain values (20).
C. Where argumentation starts: with premises about the “real”:
1. facts (individual data) and
2. truths (broader principles, such as scientific, philosophical, or religious conceptions that connect facts).
3. presumptions (expectations of what is normal or likely), imposing the burden of proof on those who would dispute it; can be “common sense” or established formally (as in law).
D. Premises about “what is preferable”:
1. values: concrete and abstract. Defenders of the status quo tend to base arguments on concrete values (Edmund Burke: “the rights of Englishmen”; “Frats are contrary to the Aggie spirit”) and radicals tend to begin with abstract values (“liberty, equality, fraternity”).
2. value hierarchies (which is more important, liberty or equality?).
3. Loci (similar to Aristotle’s topoi): highly general preferences that can be used as guides to choice:
a. Locus of quantity: “Greatest good of the greatest number” arguments; “Protection of a small number of spotted owls is ridiculous compared to the number of people it would throw out of work.”
b. Locus of quality: Challenges strength of numbers: “The spotted owl’s ecological value is unique and irreplaceable. “
c. Locus of the irreparable (J. Robert Cox)
d. Locus of order (what is earlier is better than what comes later)
e. Locus of the existent (what is possible is better)
f. Locus of the person (important of autonomy, dignity, self-worth)
g. [I have added the locus of the “inevitable” in the analysis both of Marxism and of Third Wave arguments about globalization]
E. Selection of data and “presence”: the importance of engaging the imagination in argumentation (bringing before the eyes); can also work in reverse (helping us NOT see something). Establishing communion with the audience. (Figures of speech an essential part of creating a sense of presence/communion.)
1. Caesar’s bloody tunic as brandished by Antony
2. Photos of aborted fetuses or executed prisoners as "data" for a moral argument; do they help or hinder argument?
F. Techniques of association or liaison (linking premises and conclusion):
1. Quasi-logical, deductive arguments--closed or fundamentalist systems of thought tend to argue on the basic of quasi-logical deductions
a. establish an incompatibility in the opponent’s argument: “Hate is not a family value”
b. definition of terms
c. reciprocity and the rule of justice (treat like cases alike)
d. parts and wholes
e. probabilities
[f. I would add here the use of models in the social sciences, especially in economics: e.g. the supply-demand curve that “proves” that an increase in the minimum wage causes unemployment]
2. Arguments based on the structure of reality:
a. Liaisons of succession: causality, correlation, slippery slopes
b. Liaisons of coexistence: argument from authority
c. Symbolic liaisons: attack the flag=attack the US
3. Argument by:
a. Example: presupposes certain regularities of which the examples provide a concretization
b. Illustration: creates presence plus builds an inductive argument
4. Analogy and metaphor:
a. Mathematical proportion posits the equality of two relations (a/b=c/d), while in analogy we affirm that there is a similitude: a is to be as c is to d. a-b=the THEME of the analogy; c-d=the PHOROS. Phoros comes from a region different from the theme and better known than it. [Mind is to brain as software is to hardware. What does this analogy leave out? What does it help us see that previous analogies did not?]
b. Metaphor is a fusion of the domain of the theme with that of the phoros, a condensed analogy. Philosophy is always based on metaphors.
G. Techniques of dissociation:
1. Introduction of division into a concept the audience previously regarded as a single entity. “Genesis is a religious document, not a scientific document.”
2. Term I=appearance; Term II=underlying reality: this is the fundamental philosophic pair out of which the others proceed: rhetoric/dialectic, nomos/phusis, langue/parole, competence/performance.
H. Fullness of arguments and strength of arguments: each type of philosophy favors certain kinds of arguments and discounts others. Utilitarians view arguments from consequence alone as valid.

Posted by jim at 09:04 PM | Comments (5)

February 27, 2005

Mr. Watson? Come Here, I Want....

Virtues of the Communication Major

Strange twists of the mind occur during the Pennsylvania winter. But this one's worth posting: it occured to me the other day that -- given the shrinking terrain of "the humanities" in "the liberal arts," communication majors -- at least in my dept at my U -- are unique in that they are exposed to both (social) scientific and humanistic ways of knowing. Few if any other majors at Ol' State are allowed that kind of promis'kitty anymore. In any case, something I heard half-assed (a good criterion for measurement, I think) on NPR a few hours ago offers Communication Studies -- and rhetoric more free-rangely -- an interesting exercise in Comparative Epistemologies and Methodological Pluralism. Hope you can hear it. I'll post the transcript as a comment as soon as I am able. Teachable text.

I'll also continue to try to figure out how to fold audio into The Blogora more often and sustainably; enjoyed acline's Radio Rhetorica the other day: it's Fridays at 1:30 texass time -- that's what i learned to call central time when i lived in texass -- at 1:30 p.m. big news coming to missouri next week! I think we need podCast interviews of rhetorishuns.

Posted by rhosa at 05:47 PM | Comments (3)

February 25, 2005

Writing Tips for Dissertations and Books?

It's that season of the year for me when graduate students are submitting drafts of their theses and dissertation. It's also the season when I look at the various writing deadlines I have and realized how far behind I am. I thought it might be useful to pool together our collective rhetorical wisdom on the topic of finishing large writing projects such as dissertations and books. Here are some suggestions I learned a long time ago and have worked well for me: 1. Try to write every day for about 3 hours. 2. Find the time of day at which you're most productive, and organize your schedule accordingly. I work best from about 1-4 in the afternoon, for example. 3. And this is the most important: always stop writing when you know you have more to say. It will be easier to pick up your writing the next day.
Any other tips?

Posted by jim at 11:51 AM | Comments (9)

February 13, 2005

Rhetoric 101

Law professor Lawrence Solum has a useful feature on his blog --occasional introductions to key concepts in legal theory (this week he discusses "concepts" and "essentially contested concepts"). As part of the outreach efforts of RSA, I thought it might useful to post key aspects of rhetorical theory on the Blogora.

Here are some things that come to mind:

1. Topical invention (the various systems, from ill/blame/cure/cost to an sit/quid sit/quale sit, and so on).

2. Aristotle's pistis (for putting the "piss" in epistemology as rhosa puts it).

3. The term "rhetoric" itself (from art of the logos to Schiappa's argument about Plato's invention of the term).

4. Perelman's system of analyzing argument (facts, truths, presumptions, values, value hierarchies, loci).

5. Habermas' Ideal Speech Situation

6. Burke's pentad.

Any further suggestions? Ideally they would be about a page, with links to other sites. Anyone interested in volunteering to compose some?

Posted by jim at 03:27 PM | Comments (0)

February 09, 2005

My Dream Curriculum

Perhaps someday there will be levels of higher education funding like we had in the 1960's, and educational reform--especially of undergraduate education--will be on the national agenda again. Departments will be secure enough not to worry about turf wars, and the supply and demand of Ph.D's will be closer to a market-clearing equilibrium.

In this new world, dear Blogora readers, how would you construct your ideal rhetoric curriculum? We would still have Communication and English departments, I imagine, but how would you construct a program in or between these departments?

My idea: construct a free-standing program (sort of like Iowa) in which faculty have homes in other departments. There would be no "major," but rather a unified core curriculum consisting of the following:

1. A full-year freshman course integrating public speaking, debate, writing, computer graphic design, and logic.

2. A set of sophomore-level courses involving in-depth practice of the skills described in 1 (one might concentrate on debate, for example, or webpage design).

3. A Plato-to-Nato history of rhetoric course, designed to fulfill the function of "Western Civilization" courses, either at junior or senior levels, but integrating both rhetorical theory and rhetorical practice (one would read de Oratore AND Cicero's speeches, Augustine's de doctrina Christiana AND his Confessions or sermons).

4. An American Public Address course, including major orations, campaigns, and Supreme Court decisions.

5. A "capstone" course in the major--for example, a policy rhetoric course for social science majors, a rhetoric of science course for engineers or natural scientists, and so on. The emphasis would be on the public implications of the chosen major, and on writing and speaking for both professional and lay audiences.

Any thoughts?

Posted by jim at 10:45 PM | Comments (2)

February 04, 2005

Teachable Moments

I am teaching the history of rhetoric class this spring (250 students) at Texas A&M. Last Friday I lectured about Socrates. I remain amazed that philosophers and political theorists (the two groups of people besides rhetoricians who talk about Socrates today) continue to teach Plato's dialogues without discussing the historical context of Athenian democracy and Socrates' connections with the oligarchs who overthrew it. In the course of attempting to take the "high priest of the Church of Reason" (in Pirsig's happy phrase) down a peg or two, I described the prevalence of pederasty in the aristocratic circle in Athens. I showed them Jacques David's famous death of Socrates painting and pointed out that Socrates, though famously ugly, was "apparently irresistable to young men." At that point about 1/3 of the class erupted in a loud hiss (a conventional Aggie response, usually reserved for mentions of "t.u." (the University of Texas-Austin).

I simply smiled and shook my head, and went on. I don't feel good about myself for having let that "teachable moment" pass. It seems like the functional equivalent of listening to an ugly ethnic joke without saying anything to the teller. But what could I say? "Grow the f*** up!?" I work myself into a state of tension every class in straining not to come off as a "lib'ral," and being "fair and balanced," so if I "out" myself as a gay-lover do I ruin my credibility for the rest of the semester--credibility necessary if I wish to lead them (Leo Strauss-style) to higher truths? I don't know. Any thoughts? I should add that virtually all the hissers in questions were wearing military uniforms at the time (the Corps of Cadets).

Posted by jim at 12:02 AM | Comments (4)

January 28, 2005

zoon kai barbaroi

paul simon's song "when numbers get serious" has been in my head for a few months. v 6.2 of eudora just started the loop of that song playing in mah head again; on Mac OS 10.1, everytime i open eudora, she gives me a number. so i know how i'm doin'.

working on something about american psycho and today's AP stories on guantanamo. is one measure of a "state" what it is willing to have its soldiers do in its name?

Posted by rhosa at 06:01 PM | Comments (3)

January 26, 2005

What is there in Isocrates?

In my graduate rhetorical theory seminar -- Ethos and Tropos: Rhetorical Agency -- we are reading Isocrates (only the Loeb Vol. II), and I have decided to try a'speriment....

NOT a "randomized," "controlled" speriment, I have to add.

I'm asking the students in the class (finally a small seminar!!!!!!!!!! six seminarians from CAS, one from ENGL, one from PLSCI) to post their very short responses to the week's reading on The Blogora. I'll start with a prompt to which seminarians -- or anyone -- can respond; seminarians are also free to ignore the prompt and post whatever they like about Isocrates. Last week we read "On the Antidosis"; for next Monday we are reading the rest of the Loeb Vol II.

"PROMPT":
Soooooo: What is there in Isocrates to learn about rhetorical agency?

Yes, we already read Leff's piece in P&R.

Posted by rhosa at 03:30 PM | Comments (7)

January 19, 2005

Performance Anxiety

My COMM 301 class, Rhetoric in Western Thought, starts in about a half hour. The enrollment is around 250 (required course for our Communication major, and also counts for a Humanities distribution requirement). I am now in my 29th year of teaching (if you include graduate school), so you would think I wouldn't get nervous before class. It's not as bad as it used to be; I never was able to sleep the night before class, up until about 6 years ago. Aspects of the technology required now for large classes befuddle me: to use or not use a microphone (I mean, jeez, Pericles and Cicero and Debs didn't need one), using PowerPoint (no, never), using the newer technologies like WebCt (don't want to, am required now to use it to post grades). Any tips out there in rhetoric-land for teaching large classes?

Posted by jim at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)

January 17, 2005

"An Accountability Moment"

Happy Inauguration Week....

In a Friday interview with the Washington Post, President Bush offered a new twist on the relationship among voting, public opinion, and governing in a, an, er, democracy. (See complete article below; if you follow the link above, you'll need a washpost.com login.)

File this under "Now Let Me Get This Straight...".
Better yet, bracket "straight" and don't file it.

Readings and responses?

Plans for teaching the $40 million corporate inauguration orgy and issues surrounding it?

More "conservatives" who feel silenced?

Is your city, town, or campus planning public rallies on Inauguration Day?

Bush Says Election Ratified Iraq Policy
By Jim VandeHei and Michael A. Fletcher

President Bush said the public's decision to reelect him was a ratification of his approach toward Iraq and that there was no reason to hold any administration officials accountable for mistakes or misjudgments in prewar planning or managing the violent aftermath.

"We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. "The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me."

With the Iraq elections two weeks away and no signs of the deadly insurgency abating, Bush set no timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops and twice declined to endorse Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's recent statement that the number of Americans serving in Iraq could be reduced by year's end. Bush said he will not ask Congress to expand the size of the National Guard or regular Army, as some lawmakers and military experts have proposed.

In a wide-ranging, 35-minute interview aboard Air Force One on Friday, Bush laid out new details of his second-term plans for both foreign and domestic policy. For the first time, Bush said he will not press senators to pass a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, the top priority for many social conservative groups. And he said he has no plans to cut benefits for the approximately 40 percent of Social Security recipients who collect monthly disability and survivor payments as he prepares his plan for partial privatization.

Bush was relaxed, often direct and occasionally expansive when discussing his second-term agenda, Iraq and lessons he has learned as president. Sitting at the head of a long conference table in a cabin at the front of the presidential plane, Bush wore a blue Air Force One flight jacket with a red tie and crisp white shirt. Three aides, including his new communications adviser, Nicolle Devenish, accompanied him.

With his inauguration days away, Bush defended the administration's decision to force the District of Columbia to spend $12 million of its homeland security budget to provide tighter security for this week's festivities. He also warned that the ceremony could make the city "an attractive target for terrorists."

"By providing security, hopefully that will provide comfort to people who are coming from all around the country to come and stay in the hotels in Washington and to be able to watch the different festivities in Washington, and eat the food in Washington," Bush said. "I think it provides them great comfort to know that all levels of government are working closely to make this event as secure as possible."

The president's inaugural speech Thursday will focus on his vision for spreading democracy around the world, one of his top foreign policy goals for the new term. But it will be Iraq that dominates White House deliberations off stage. Over the next two weeks, Bush will be monitoring closely Iraq's plan to hold elections for a 275-member national assembly. He must also deliver his State of the Union address with a message of resolve on Iraq, and he will need to seek congressional approval for about $100 billion in emergency spending, much of it for the war.

In the interview, the president urged Americans to show patience as Iraq moves slowly toward creating a democratic nation where a dictatorship once stood. But the relentless optimism that dominated Bush's speeches before the U.S. election was sometimes replaced by pragmatism and caution.

"On a complicated matter such as removing a dictator from power and trying to help achieve democracy, sometimes the unexpected will happen, both good and bad," he said. "I am realistic about how quickly a society that has been dominated by a tyrant can become a democracy. . . . I am more patient than some."

Last week, Powell said U.S. troop levels could be reduced this year, but Bush said it is premature to judge how many U.S. men and women will be needed to defeat the insurgency and plant a new and sustainable government. He also declined to pledge to significantly reduce U.S. troop levels before the end of his second term in January 2009.

"The sooner the Iraqis are . . . better prepared, better equipped to fight, the sooner our troops can start coming home," he said. Bush did rule out asking Congress to increase the size of the National Guard and regular army, as many lawmakers, including the president's 2004 opponent, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), are urging. "What we're going to do is make sure that the missions of the National Guard and the reserves closely dovetail with active army units, so that the pressure . . . is eased."

A new report released last week by U.S. intelligence agencies warned that the war in Iraq has created a training ground for terrorists. Bush called the report "somewhat speculative" but acknowledged "this could happen. And I agree. If we are not diligent and firm, there will be parts of the world that become pockets for terrorists to find safe haven and to train. And we have a duty to disrupt that."

As for perhaps the most notorious terrorist, Osama bin Laden, the administration has so far been unsuccessful in its attempt to locate the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Asked why, Bush said, "Because he's hiding." While some terrorism experts complain U.S. allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, could do more to help capture the al Qaeda leader, Bush said he could not name a single U.S. ally that is not doing everything possible to assist U.S. efforts.

"I am pleased about the hunt, and I am pleased he's isolated," Bush said. "I will be more pleased when he's brought to justice, and I think he will be."

Bush acknowledged that the United States' standing has diminished in some parts of the world and said he has asked Condoleezza Rice, his nominee to replace Powell at the State Department, to embark on a public diplomacy campaign that "explains our motives and explains our intentions."

Bush acknowledged that "some of the decisions I've made up to now have affected our standing in parts of the world," but predicted that most Muslims will eventually see America as a beacon of freedom and democracy.

"There's no question we've got to continue to do a better job of explaining what America is all about," he said.

On the domestic front, Bush said he would not lobby the Senate to pass a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage.

While seeking reelection, Bush voiced strong support for such a ban, and many political analysts credit this position for inspiring record turnout among evangelical Christians, who are fighting same-sex marriage at every juncture. Groups such as the Family Research Council have made the marriage amendment their top priority for the next four years.

The president said there is no reason to press for the amendment because so many senators are convinced that the Defense of Marriage Act -- which says states that outlaw same-sex unions do not have to recognize such marriages conducted outside their borders -- is sufficient. "Senators have made it clear that so long as DOMA is deemed constitutional, nothing will happen. I'd take their admonition seriously. . . . Until that changes, nothing will happen in the Senate."

Bush's position is likely to infuriate some of his socially conservative supporters, but congressional officials say it will be impossible to secure the 67 votes needed to pass the amendment in the Senate.

Yesterday morning, the day after the interview, White House spokesman Scott McClellan called to say the president wished to clarify his position, saying Bush was "willing to spend political capital" but believes it will be virtually impossible to overcome Senate resistance until the courts render a verdict on DOMA.

On the subject of revamping Social Security, Bush said he has no intention of making changes that would affect the approximately 40 percent of Social Security recipients who receive disability or survivor benefits. The Bush administration has privately told Republicans that the White House plan to restructure Social Security will include a reduction in benefits for future retirees. The interview marked the first time Bush strongly suggested disability and survivor benefits would be shielded.

"Frankly, our discussions in terms of reform have not centered on the survivor-disability aspect of Social Security," Bush said. "We're talking about the retirement system of Social Security."

Bush has put an overhaul of Social Security at the top of his domestic priorities. He has revealed few details of his reform proposal, except to say he wants to enable young workers to voluntarily divert a portion of their taxes to private accounts. Program participants could then pass the accounts to their heirs.

Bush said it is imperative that the White House and Congress deal with the "baby boomer bulge" that is threatening the long-term solvency of Medicare as well. Medicare faces the same demographic crunch imperiling Social Security in coming decades, as the population grows older and more money is taken out of the system to pay benefits than is put in by younger Americans funding it. Many lawmakers and policy experts say Medicare is in much bigger trouble than Social Security because of skyrocketing health care costs and the added expense of the prescription drug benefit signed into law by Bush in his first term.

"The difference, of course, is that in Medicare, we began a reform system [in the first term] that hopefully will take some of the pressures off" the system by preventing illnesses and streamlining the program, he said. Social Security and Medicare trustees estimate that the cost of Bush's prescription drug plan will top $8 trillion by 2075 -- more than twice the projected shortfall in Social Security.

On the election Bush said he was puzzled that he received only about 11 percent of the black vote, according to exit polls, about a 2 percentage point increase over his 2000 total.

"I did my best to reach out, and I will continue to do so as the president," Bush said. "It's important for people to know that I'm the president of everybody."

Posted by rhosa at 01:14 PM | Comments (4)

December 18, 2004

Is There Censorship? -- from tomorrow's NYTBR

Tomorrow's New York Times Book Review features an essay -- in the French sense of the word, for the most part -- that attempts to think about whether and how "censorship" still applies in a post-Roth world.

NYTBR writer and editor Rachel Donadio's essay, with the perhaps obscenely weak title "Is There Censorship?", doesn't cite Roth or other court cases; still, the essay is worth reading. You'll find it below, in full, including the New York Timesish conclusion: if we're publishing something about it, all must be well with "freedom of expression."

Censorship: Is There?? Well, is there?????

The photo is of Lauren Hall, one of the students in this semester's English 474: Literary Public Spheres class, reading aloud from Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer on the steps of Willard. More on that anon.

She was not alone. And there was not, we think, censorship. Was there???

Essay: Is There Censorship?

December 19, 2004
By RACHEL DONADIO

In accepting a lifetime achievement award from the National
Book Foundation at a black-tie gala in Manhattan last
month, Judy Blume, the doyenne of young-adult fiction,
delivered herself of the following admonition: "Your
favorite teacher -- the one who made literature come alive
for you, the one who helped you find exactly the book you
needed when you were curious, or hurting, the one who was
there to listen to you when you felt alone -- could become
the next target"....

A target, that is, of censorship. Blume's books, which
address sexuality and religion with a frankness that has
made many a grown-up squeamish, have been among the books
most frequently banned from public school libraries over
the years, and so the author certainly knows whereof she
speaks. Yet there was something slightly alarmist in
Blume's remarks. In somber, insistent tones, she spoke as
if the authorities were lurking behind the doors of the
Marriott Marquis ballroom ready to burst in at any moment
and break up the party.

Blume's speech perfectly captured the mood in certain
literary circles these days, where air once thick with now
banned cigarette smoke instead hangs heavy with talk of the
C-word. But the kind of censorship Blume has faced concerns
individual libraries choosing not to lend her books, or
placing restrictions on who can borrow them. It isn't about
government harassment, even though that's what Blume seemed
to be implying.

The definition of censorship has loosened so much that the
word has become nearly devoid of meaning. Long gone are the
days when the government banned racy books like D. H.
Lawrence's ''Lady Chatterley's Lover,'' Henry Miller's
''Tropic of Cancer'' or James Joyce's ''Ulysses.'' When it
comes to the written word, censorship debates are no longer
about taste and decency -- although those issues are much
in the news concerning the visual arts, television and
radio. Instead, the debate over books tends to center on
geopolitics, national security and foreign policy.

Today, most defenders of the written word are focusing
their energies on opposing certain sections of the USA
Patriot Act, chief among them Section 215, which states
that federal investigators can review library and bookstore
records under certain circumstances in terrorism
investigations. Larry Siems, the director of international
programs at the PEN American Center, strikes an oft-heard
chorus when he denounces ''the growing use of government
surveillance and government intrusion into your creative
space.'' This, in turn, feeds a concern ''that the
government is able to see more deeply into our intellectual
lives,'' Siems says.

Where there is smoke, there may very well be fire, but
there may also be mirrors. It's often hard to draw the line
between perception and practice, between how certain
government regulations are viewed and how they're actually
being enforced. The very mention of the Patriot Act is
enough to drive many publishers, writers, librarians,
bookstore owners, readers and concerned citizens into a
near-paranoid frenzy at the idea that the government is
intruding into their personal business, although few can
cite specific instances in which that is the case.

Indeed, the marketing department of any given publishing
house probably has far more power over free expression in
America than any government office; if it decides a smart
book won't sell, the publisher may not sign it. Attitudes
are rampant, but facts are harder to find. And ultimately,
grandstanding and self-righteousness obscure the fact that
some cases do approach government censorship.

Consider two recent lawsuits. This fall, a group of
publishers and Shirin Ebadi, a lawyer and leading women's
rights advocate in Iran who won the Nobel Peace Prize in
2003, filed two separate lawsuits against the Treasury
Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC,
which places serious restrictions on importing written work
by authors in Iran, Sudan, Cuba and other countries under
United States trade embargo. Under these regulations,
buying the rights to unwritten books or making significant
editorial changes to written works without a license is
considered ''providing a service,'' and therefore akin to
trading with the enemy, something punishable with jail time
and fines of up to $1 million. Publishers argue that this
regulation violates the First Amendment.

OFAC devotes most of its resources to investigating
terrorist financing and narcotics trafficking, and the
regulations are largely intended for those aims. Some of
the regulations at issue have been on the books for decades
-- the Trading With the Enemy Act dates to 1917 -- and
since the 80's amendments have been added to exempt
''informational materials'' from being subject to
sanctions. But the current fuss dates back to this spring,
when the Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a
particularly stiff response to a query from the Institute
of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, which wanted to
publish papers by scientists from countries under embargo.
The Treasury office ruled that the institute could edit a
manuscript from a country under embargo, and engage in peer
review, but that making any ''substantive or artistic
alterations or enhancements of the manuscript'' would be
illegal without a license. Likewise, no publisher could
market a book and no literary agent could sign an author
from an embargoed country without a license.

This sent the publishers through the roof. In September,
Arcade, an independent publisher; the international
writers' organization PEN; the Association of American
University Presses; and a division of the Association of
American Publishers filed suit against the foreign assets
office. ''I think that censorship is the biggest danger
that could confront this country, aside from physical
attack,'' Richard Seaver, the editor in chief of Arcade
Publishing, said in a recent interview in his comfortably
cluttered Manhattan office. ''Censorship is never dead. It
can always rear its ugly head. The danger is greater today
than in the past 30 years.''

A month later, Ebadi -- the Iranian human rights lawyer
(and Iran's first Nobelist), who under the rules can't sell
her memoir to an American publisher -- filed her own suit,
along with the Strothman Agency of Boston, which can't
officially represent her. Ebadi raised the censorship
question in an Op-Ed article in The Times last month (which
she could publish because newspapers are exempt from some
of the regulations). ''If even people like me -- those who
advocate peace and dialogue -- are denied the right to
publish their books in the United States with the
assistance of Americans, then people will seriously
question the view of the United States as a country that
advocates democracy and freedom everywhere,'' she wrote.
''What is the difference between the censorship in Iran and
this censorship in the United States? Is it not better to
encourage a dialogue between Iranians and the American
public?''

Salman Rushdie, the president of the board of trustees of
the PEN American Center and an old hand at such debates,
wrote in a declaration as part of the suit: ''Writers in
Iran, Cuba and Sudan cannot publish freely in their own
countries. It is a tragic and dangerous irony that
Americans may not freely publish the works of those writers
here, either.'' Publishers say several books have been
suspended or canceled pending the ruling, including ''City
of Columns: Historic Architecture of Havana'' by Alejo
Carpentier (Smithsonian Institution Press), ''The
Encyclopedia of Cuban Music'' (Temple University Press) and
a paper by geologists at Shiraz University in Iran for an
issue of the journal Mathematical Geology. ''Even if there
isn't a single case where they actually prosecuted, there's
a famous chilling effect,'' says Leon Friedman, a lawyer
for PEN and Arcade who helped bring the lawsuit.
''Publishers just won't take a chance.''

Molly Millerwise, a spokeswoman for the Treasury
Department, declined to comment on the lawsuits. She says
that over the years, no more than a dozen license
applications have been submitted, most of them since last
year, and none have been denied, although some are still
pending. She says the department encourages publishers to
approach them with queries.

So why don't the publishers simply apply for a license?
Just ask any self-respecting publisher. ''I'm not going to
ask permission,'' Seaver says. ''That's the Iranian way of
doing things.'' He says Arcade is going full speed ahead
with ''Strange Times, My Dear: The PEN Anthology of
Contemporary Iranian Literature,'' which is due out in
April. He acknowledges that the lawsuit might help draw
attention to the book. ''I think libraries will be more
attentive because they will have to be. Booksellers, too.''

You can't help getting the sense that there is a certain
amount of public relations going on here. Ebadi could
conceivably have sold the rights to her memoirs in Britain,
and the British publisher could have subsequently sold the
American rights. But that wasn't the point. ''American
readers deserve to be hearing directly from someone like
Ebadi,'' says Wendy Strothman, the literary agent and
former publishing executive who is informally representing
Ebadi. Strothman says Ebadi might well have been able to
get a license ''because of her stature as a Nobel
laureate,'' but the lawsuit was ''a matter of principle.''
It's also not entirely clear whether the Treasury
Department would allow an American publisher to import such
a work from Britain. ''There are so many weighing
factors,'' Millerwise says.

Ebadi hasn't yet written her memoir. In her statement to
the court, which reads a little like a book proposal, Ebadi
says her book would discuss ''how I became a lawyer, a
judge and a law professor despite the obvious and often
official obstacles women in Iran have had to face.''

There certainly does seem to be a market for Iranian
women's memoirs. Both lawsuits cite the success of Azar
Nafisi's best-selling ''Reading Lolita in Tehran,'' about a
group of women who met weekly in secret to read forbidden
works of Western literature, and of ''Persepolis,'' Marjane
Satrapi's graphic novel about growing up during the Iranian
revolution. Nafisi emigrated to Washington in 1997, and
Satrapi now lives in France; neither could have published
her book in Iran. For her part, Nafisi says she finds the
Treasury Department regulations ''mind-boggling,'' and has
written a letter to the court supporting Ebadi's suit. ''I
understand sometimes there might be sanctions,'' Nafisi
says. ''The point about this law is the people it will hurt
are the people who have been suppressed in that country
anyway.'' She continues: ''The principle of publishing
should be understanding, should be more knowledge. On
principle I think you have to publish even Ayatollah
Khomeni!''

Although the Treasury rules have been on the books for
ages, the lawsuits play into the literary world's general
dislike of the Bush administration. When the regulations
''reached international ears, it was a very clear example
to the international community of a kind of American
cultural closed-mindedness,'' Larry Siems of PEN says. ''I
spent a lot of time explaining to my international
colleagues that this was not this administration's doing.''

Both lawsuits may very well be settled in the coming
months. In November the Treasury Department asked for a
one-month extension so it could file its response to the
suits in January. ''The reason for the requested extension
is that the parties anticipate that there may be
developments with a possibly significant effect on the
posture of the case, such that the briefing may need to be
refocused or may even prove unnecessary,'' the Treasury
Department's attorney wrote to the judge, according to a
copy of the letter provided by the Strothman Agency's
lawyer. The group of publishers received a similar letter,
one of its lawyers said. Both sets of plaintiffs agreed to
the extension. It remains to be seen whether the Treasury
Department will adjust its regulations or rule only on
those specific cases.

Meanwhile, these lawsuits have provided many in the
literary and publishing world with a cause -- one that's
far more concrete than nebulous fears about the Bush
administration or the Patriot Act. And it's certainly more
satisfying to focus on censorship than on the future of
publishing. It also seems to get the creative juices
flowing. ''There's always a clash, an underlying tension,
between politics, which is basically trying to keep the
status quo, and literature, which is constantly questioning
the status quo,'' Nafisi says. ''This tension between
politics and culture is healthy. Each of us are playing our
roles.'' You might say that all this conflict about
infringements -- both real and perceived -- on free
expression bodes well for free expression.

Rachel Donadio is a writer and editor at the Book Review.

Posted by rhosa at 04:55 PM | Comments (0)

December 16, 2004

H-Net Seeking Donations

Among the best and earliest online resources for rhetoricians was/is h-rhetor, part of h-net. Others of you who subscribe to h-rhetor or other h-net listservs likely received this email as well, but I put it here for those who might not know about h-rhetor; I also put it here to foreground the work that goes into these resources that too many folks use without thinking about what -- and who -- make them possible.

"Dear H-Net Subscriber:

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new media....

"The funds you provided did indeed help us meet significant
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"On behalf of H-Net -- its Council, officers, staff, and editors -- I
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"The Council has determined that an additional $25,000 this year will
enable H-Net to meet critical programming and development objectives
for its networks. For example, these funds can help us pilot our new
suite of content tools that H-Net editors can use to build online
collections of documents, images, and sound all within the familiar
gatekept format that H-Net is known for.

"As the communications center of our profession, H-Net needs to be
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patrons $100-$499, and benefactors $500+. Donations can be made one of
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"1. The preferred and most secure method is online via a Verisign secure site: www.h-net.org/donations

"2. If you don't have internet access or have technical difficulties
donating online, you can give by mail, payable to:
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On behalf of the H-Net officers, Council, Staff, and Editors"

Posted by rhosa at 09:49 AM | Comments (0)

December 11, 2004

Your First Time?

I have been reading a lot of Greek stuff this past week, partially as a distraction from grading and partially to retool the first month of my history of rhetoric class next spring. Page DuBois, in her book Sappho Is Burning, discusses the centrality of pothos in the work of Sappho: "a yearning for someone absent, for a lost time, a lost pleasure, and her poems re-create, in a longing mode, that time, that person, those pleasures, but always at a distance, framed by the poet's voice in the present of the poem, recalling, recollecting" (29). DuBois then connects Sappho's pothos with her own stance as a classical scholar: "My desire is not to return to a world now lost, one in many ways more terrible than our own, marked by cruelty, torture, slavery, and misogyny, as well as by democracy, but rather a desire to know that world in all its complexity and ambition. It is the experience of loss and regret, of looking back . . . the look at another form of social and economic organization, one different from the commodified alienated relations we know, or the yearning characteristic of the 'imaginary,' nostalgia for the mirror phase, a time of fusion and wholeness--that pothos evokes for me" (29-30).

It's a weird thing, this studying of rhetoric. Although I have had a number of moments of doubt over the years about whether I am suited for an academic career, I have never doubted my initial impulse in wanting to study rhetoric--in fact that impulse is even stronger now than it was thirty years ago. But how, to use the Freudian terminology, did I or you, dear reader, get "cathected" onto rhetoric in the first place? If you have a stray moment in the next week or so, I'd like to hear from the Blogora's readers about the moment or process in which your "first time" with rhetoric came about?

Mine started in high school, with a particularly charismatic speech and drama teacher named Michael Tillmann, who first directed me as Mercutio (go figure. . .) in Romeo and Juliet during my junior year. Those were the days (and here my pothos begins) when interest in oral performance carved out a separate disciplinary space for speech, debate, oral interpretation, and theater. By my senior year, Mr. Tillmann had me reading Plato's Gorgias and most of the Greek dramatists. I'm not sure how much of it I understood, but I was "cathected" onto rhetoric by what now seems to be a burst of a Nietzschean sense of power: a shy person, unathletic in a town fixated on hockey, my first real experience of being powerful, in the sense of using my capacities to their fullest, occurred when I was giving a speech or performing in a play. When I went to college, majoring in what then was "Speech and Theatre," as well as in Religion, my next mentor, Jim Pratt, set me to reading Kenneth Burke, who not only confirmed my initial experience with the power of rhetoric but also gave me a way of looking at the world that--with considerable anxiety of influence along the way--I still have.

Enter the antagonist in the drama. By the time I was a senior, I was in third semester classical Greek, and we were translating the Gorgias. While reading that first section, where Socrates wants Gorgias to define "who he is," my Greek professor turned to me in front of the whole class and said,"Jim, you're majoring in speech. How can you justify that, given what Plato says here?" There were some stifled giggles at my expense as I stuttered an unsatisfactory answer to the professor's question. A similar set of experiences followed short thereafter; my political philosophy professor, who was most responsible for my interest in Plato, also embarrassed me in front of a class by saying, "Jim, why on earth would someone like you with such a good classical education, ever major in speech?" And a few others--from faculty incredulous that I had decided to go to graduate school in Communication Studies at Northwestern rather than to study historical theology, my other main interest at the time. This was all quite unsettling to me, but it did make me a much closer reader of Plato in general, and of the Gorgias in particular. All I needed now, I realized, was to point out to my Greek professor the fact that the dialogue ends with a long speech by Socrates in which he does allow a place for rhetoric in public life. (I know it's more complicated than that, especially since no one at Callicles' party appears to be paying attention to Socrates by that point.) So, again, there got to be something personal about my relationship to rhetoric: I studied it more intensely in order to fend off the criticisms of those misguided souls who had attacked "my precious."

Perhaps it's just as simple as that: we gravitate toward those subjects with which we associate enhanced "self-esteem." But I don't think it is that simple. Because the pothos remains: the desire to speak with the dead; the admiration for those past moments at which the yearning for political liberty, oratory, and the arts were connected; the hope for a better college curriculum in the humanities; the belief that public controversy could be better than it is.

What's your story, dear reader?

Posted by jim at 11:44 PM | Comments (6)

December 08, 2004

Book Discussions?

Since most of us have some more free time coming up with the holidays, I wanted to propose we try something new on Blogora: selecting some common reading for discussion--perhaps just an essay at first, and then working up to a book. ddd, rhosa, and jim could comment on it first, and then open up to general discussion. Any thoughts? I just finished reading Sophocles' Philoctetes along with James Boyd White's essay on it in Heracles' Bow. I'm thinking of using the play for my first assigned reading in my rhetorical theory class in the spring; the interanimation of persuasion, force, and trickery in the play has many rich implications for our understanding of rhetoric, both in the classical period, and now. Any takers?

Posted by jim at 08:31 PM | Comments (12)

December 07, 2004

The First Amendment

The Sundance Channel and Court TV -- no, I can't believe I'm writing something positive about television, either -- are running a series on the First Amendment. Details here.

The first two installments aired tonight. I recommend the series to you with great enthusiasm and without reservation ... oooh too many letters of rec! ... without reservation, that is, unless you have a problem with the First Amendment. And don't we all, at some point? And isn't that kinda the most wonderful thing about it?

While my students and I are reading aloud from TROPIC OF CANCER on the steps of Willard Building this Thursday 9 am - 1 pm (their idea: let me be clear!), I'll be playing as a resource to anyone who wants to see it, back in the classroom, the second installment of the series, on Amiri Baraka and the dissolution of the position of Poet Laureate of New Jersey. (I'll also be taking my turns reading.)

Sorry, Stanley: there IS such a thing as free speech ... and it's a muhfuh good thing, too.

Anybody else happen to catch tonight's series debut? Two installments of four aired: the first on Al Franken v. Fox News, and the second on Baraka. I'll add some reviews later, if they warrant, as I find them.

Posted by rhosa at 10:40 PM | Comments (0)

December 03, 2004

Blogora ... or Blahblahblah?

You might have heard that "blog" was, according to Merriam-Webster, the most often looked-up word of 2004. Hmmmmmmm.

So ... if you haven't quite "gotten" The Blogora, well, you're not alone. Jim, ddd, and I haven't quite "gotten" it yet, either. Help us out by continuing to make comments and ask questions.

What's "a public blogspace for and about rhetoric and rhetoricians" supposed to be? What's it supposed to DO? How is and could The Blogora be different from other blogs? And how might The Blogora (need to) be the same?

For one, and despite its limitations, The Blogora is more collaborative and public than most blogs. At least that was our intent, despite the structural limitations of the best blogging software we could find.

Merriam-Webster today named "blog" the 2004 "Word of the Year"; here's M-W's definition: "noun [short for Weblog] (1999) : a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer." Lots of folks who study blogs use a similar definition, and most blogs are controlled by one personality. Many are autobiographical. Until recently, most blogs involved "expressive" and "personal" rather than "argumentative" or "deliberative" and "public" topoi and tropoi.

We're still working on other RSA-related forums (for book reviews, bibliographies, post-conference chat, citizen criticism -- alternative publishing sites that lots of people have asked me about over the last several years) that will be more collaborative yet different from the important resources rhetoricians have on-line, especially h-rhetor (http://www.h-net/~rhetor), which has provided an invaluable service for the rhetoric-interested since 1989.

Meanwhile, here are three recent inventions about blogs, at and around the stasis of definition.

1.
Merriam-Webster names "blog" the 2004 "Word of the Year."
No, it's not "in the dictionary" yet. But it has been added to online versions.

2.
The Washington Post
December 3, 2004 Friday
SECTION: Style; C12
HEADLINE: OTHER NEWS

What does "blog" mean? If you've wondered, you're not alone. It is the most looked-up word this year. Blog, which is short for Web log and means an online journal, wasn't even in the dictionary at the start of the year, but got added to online versions, Merriam-Webster says.

Other popular words: cicada, hurricane and electoral.

3.
Ana Marie Cox, aka "The Wonkette," delivered one of the keynotes at this year's Online News Association meeting. She tried to play sophist to questioner demands that she offer an essential defintion of "blog." She did say that while some people think blogs must have comments, hers doesn't and never will. So there.

I've not yet found any transcripts of her keynote, but you can view her talk -- and, I hope, the Q&A, here.

Posted by rhosa at 04:30 PM | Comments (9)

Judge Posner on Democracy

From my lecture notes for a discussion of "participatory democracy" in my social movements class.

Richard Posner is the Chief Judge of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Chicago, and perhaps the most important and influential legal scholar in the U.S. He doesn't neatly fit into "liberal" or "conservative" categories, as those are understood today, because he believes strongly in individual liberty and the free market, but, unlike many libertarians, he sees a clear place for government in securing the conditions necessary for capitalist democracy to work.

In his recent book, Pragmatism, Law, and Democracy (Harvard UP 2003), Posner contrasts two visions of democracy:
1. One, which he calls Concept 1 democracy is so-called "deliberative democracy."
a. In Concept 1 democracy, voters and politicians alike are expected to be civic-minded, debating one another town-meeting-style with the public interest in mind rather than their own selfish ends. This is the rhetorical vision of democracy embodied in most of the social movements we have studied this semester. Studying communication and rhetoric in order to improve "civic participation" is the Concept 1 "dream" of most people who teach in departments like ours. When you take public speaking or argumentation/debate, and study tests of evidence or fallacies, the implied political value is to avoid distorting facts and specious reasoning in public discourse--even IF public life is filled with bad evidence and reasoning that appears to get people elected. A majority of people who voted for Mr. Bush believed that there were ties between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden, and that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

b. This kind of democracy, Posner argues, is a pipe dream. It is all very well to talk about deliberative democracy in the safe precincts of the "faculty workshop," in which all the participants are equally gifted (or glib) and all agree on the basic premises of the discussion. But, he argues, nothing in the capacity of the American people, or in the varied and intractable nature of their differences, suggests that they are likely to turn our diverse democracy into a new Athens.

c. As a result, Concept 1 democrats who acknowledge this state of affairs may be forced to substitute deliberation by elites - especially judges - for popular deliberation. That result is deeply anti-democratic.

2. For his alternative, "Concept 2 democracy," Posner draws on the work of Joseph Schumpeter. This is a brazenly unromantic vision of democracy - one that treats politics "as a competition among self-interested politicians, constituting a ruling class, for the support of the people, also assumed to be self-interested, and to be none too interested in or well informed about politics."

a. Not surprisingly, Posner's model of democracy looks not to ancient Athens but to the market, Posner's favorite model. It divides our democracy into two distinct classes: the class of voters-as-consumers, and the "sellers" - the elite class of elected officials and their appointees. These elite rulers market their views to the voters and so compete for electoral advantage.

b. If Concept 1 democracy is the dream, Posner writes, Concept 2 democracy is the modern American reality. Blacks or gays got their rights "recognized" more because their votes (and their pocketbooks as consumers) came to matter a great deal, not because they "inspired" the democratic masses.

c. Not content simply to describe this reality, Posner lauds it. Concept 2 democracy, in his view, allows the voters to focus their energies productively and avoid intractable debates. Meanwhile, it carves out an arena for ambitious politicians that yokes their energy (albeit imperfectly) to the public will. Nobody wants to spend all his/her time on politics; there are more important things like work, recreation, and family life.

d. Posner seeks a form of democracy that will blunt and soften ideological extremes. For example, he favors a system that limits the number of political parties, thus forcing them to moderate their views to reach a broader audience. But he favors reforming the law to discipline the Democrats and Republicans by ensuring a credible threat of entry by third parties. What, however, accounts for the drift of the Republican Party to the far right recently?

3. Problems?
a. To me, his argument is a significant challenge that "deliberative democrats" like myself need to take seriously, and not dismiss out of hand.
b. The concepts are sort of black-and-white thinking: EITHER concept 1 OR concept 2, without recognizing shades of grey inbetween.
c. How on earth would you ever TEACH concept 2 democracy in high school or college? what ever would motivate people to enter public service on such a cynical account?
d. It may be true that some groups, e.g. white middle-class Americans, can safely ignore politics a good deal of the time, but some groups cannot. Jews historically have voted in greater numbers and contributed to political parties/causes in greater amounts than would be "normal," because Jewish survival is dependent on being politically aware. The same, I imagine, is true of GLBT people, or African-Americans, and so on. Posner lacks a sense of political "evil" that people need to be mobilized against.

Posted by jim at 02:49 PM | Comments (0)

November 29, 2004

Gleanings

Three things I've read recently in the NYTimes Magazine suggest -- forgive my overuse of the following word -- topoi that rhetoricians might find -- please forgive ditto -- inventive. Inventional. Pregnant. Full of dogs -- i mean Gods. Whateverrrr.

1. Most recently, this week's NYTimes Magazine, focused around "childhood" -- and a hoary experience it is, antecedent unclear -- features in its "Lives" section, which generally ends the magazine, an "as told to" feature spoken by a 17-yr-old "teenager" who found his way into the Media Lab at M.I.T. Titled YOUNG AND VERY INVENTIVE, the story speaks to opportunities for some kinds of invention -- fundable kinds -- and/but the power of invention more generally. Makes me wonder what kids could do if democracy was fundable. And "high-tech." And collaborative.

Here's an excerpt: "When I first came" to the Media Lab "I made the assumption -- just to set myself straight -- that everyone at M.I.T. was smarter than I was. What I realized later is that everyone makes that assumption, and it allows everyone to learn from one another, which is really cool. The Media Lab is the most collaborative place on earth...."

2. Elfriede Jelinek, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize for Lit, has some inventional things to say in an interview titled A GLOOM OF HER OWN.

3. The Left (maybe) contemplates (maybe) States' Rights (maybe) in an article in the frontish "The Way We Live Now: 11.21.04" section, titled A STATES' RIGHTS LEFT? This seems to have evaporated already on the NYT archives; check Lexis/Nexus. It's important to contemplate a "progressive" movement that would forego thinking about the koine, the common, the shared by all and instead build strategies based on the writer -- Jim Holt's -- reasoning: "The more conservatives succeed in reducing the size and scope of the federal government, the more fiscal freedom the blue states will have to pursue their own idea of a just society...." But, hey: anyone in PA willing to start running against Santorum???

A typo/graphic sidebar, sourced from THE GREAT DIVIDE: RETRO vs. METRO AMERICA, contrasts the five wealthiest states -- all blue, those which pay the most in taxes into the "federal system" (CT, NJ, MA, MD, NY) with the five poorest states -- all red -- those which receive the most from the federal gummint: UT, NM, WV, AK, MS.

What particularly tweaked me about this piece, in addition to state stats on gay marriage tolerance vs. divorce rates, capital punishment vs crime rates, etc, was the ending, wherein we find the seeds of a reverse one and one-half Garry Wills on Lincoln, so to speak: "Meanwhile, blue state liberals should stop despairing and start thinking locally. Instead of saying 'The United States is ....' try saying, 'The United States are ....' See? You feel better already."

Posted by rhosa at 09:29 PM | Comments (0)

November 28, 2004

Pora: It's Time

Ukraine, Student Movements, the Streets

The New York Times carries two updates in today's editions on the situation in Ukraine. The sidebar features a pretty solid discussion of the role of Pora (Ukrainian for "It's Time"), a student democracy movement, in what's happening in the streets. As Raoul sez in a post buried in the bowels of The Blogora, and as Jim pointed out a few days ago, there are reasons to ask questions about where Pora's money and support are coming from ... and more generally where money and support are coming from to power the challenge to the legitimacy of last Sunday's election. Still, particularly as many of us continue to wonder about the role of rhetoric in politics and social movements -- and in student movements -- this situation compels our attention. You can see the complete text of the NYTimes sidebar below, in case you don't want to log on to the NYTimes website. The main story is here.

In the context of sustaining democracy after Nov. 2 -- which is part of how/where The Blogora got started -- the situation in Ukraine also may well deserve our students' attention. I'm not trying to eke an international canon from a universe of struggles, some publicized and many not, but instead to remind myself and others that what fueled much of the work done during the months leading up to the Nov. 2 election in the U.S. -- much of it done by people who hadn't been involved in politics for years and years or who had never been active -- was the sight of millions of people in the streets in New York and across the globe before the U.S. invaded Iraq. Among the other rhetorical strategies we have at our disposal -- inflected through political economies of media I need to add: or DON'T have at our disposal -- it behooves us to think about when it might be most prudent to GO THERE: to go into the streets. What we do there -- if and when we GO THERE -- is another matter. Two additional resources for thinking about these questions are below. I send them not because I agree with them (particularly the second one) but bc someone may find them inventional:

Steve Earle and Sheryl Crow's cover of The Chambers Brothers' TIME HAS COME TODAY, recorded for STEAL THIS MOVIE (the audio won't upload; link takes you to the text).

Abbie Hoffman's speech at a Yippie Workshop in 1968.

Rhetorically, it's powerful to me to think about kairos and topos -- WHEN and WHERE -- in the context of Ukraine ... and maybe in the context of what remains of democracy in the U.S.

When? Pora. Kairos. Time has come. It's time. Why We Can't Wait. If Not Now, Then When? ...

Where?? Where?????

Youth Movement Underlies the Opposition in Ukraine

November 28, 2004

By C. J. CHIVERS
The New York Times

KIEV, Ukraine, Nov. 27 - It began with a call from the
center of the opposition movement's stage in Independence
Square - Ukraine's officially defeated presidential
candidate said Monday that demonstrators would build a tent
city and protest until he prevailed - and within minutes
the tents appeared.

It continued all week, and much of it was the work of
teenagers and university students, who have helped force
the government and population of Ukraine to face a stark
choice.

Before the Ukrainian opposition here reached its eventual
great mass and overwhelmed Kiev, swift and sophisticated
signs appeared of organization to ensure that the
pro-democracy rally formed and grew, and almost all of it
was young.

The youth movement in Ukraine has had many models, and it
has learned its lessons well. For more than two decades,
unarmed street movements challenged entrenched state power
in the Soviet Union and in the breakaway republics it
became. The protests ranged from far more dangerous days
when Lech Walesa organized peaceful resistance in Poland to
the rambunctious crowds that helped depose Eduard
Shevardnadze in Georgia last year.

As the government of President Leonid D. Kuchma moved
toward passing power to his personally selected choice in
recent days, young Ukrainians, working in part through a
somewhat cellular group that calls itself Pora, meaning
It's Time, immediately occupied Kreschatik Street, a
central retail boulevard adjacent to Independence Square.

Within minutes they pitched tents, posted unarmed sentries
and produced mounds of food and winter clothing. Within
hours they set up field kitchens and medical aid stations,
circulated broadsheets outlining details for civil
disobedience and urging the police not to shoot, and passed
out a seemingly endless supply of posters, banners,
ribbons, flags, stickers and badges that turned the ever
expanding crowd into a telegenic bright orange.

The planning behind the youth occupation could not be
missed. "We heard that Yanukovich would try to organize
this fraud, and we were prepared for this kind of
situation," said Mariana Savytska, 19, a Pora spokeswoman.
"We decided we also had to do something, to raise the
people's will."

The people who have swarmed the capital defy ready
characterization.

They are students and intelligentsia, and they are
westward-leaning citizens of urban centers who aspire for
more extensive integration into Europe. But they include
pensioners and war veterans, working-class men and women
from western and northern Ukraine, people from a wide
variety of professions and trades, including members of the
police, more of whom appeared on the side of opposition on
Saturday, some of their faces aglow with the surprise of
their choice.

But in the first days a visible nucleus of young people
acted with noticeable skill to ensure that the lines held
until broader Ukrainian society stood beside them.

Their role was far from the only factor driving the
peaceful uprising that has halted the government here. A
senior Western diplomat in Kiev noted Saturday that the
opposition was organized not just by skill or a faith in a
candidate, but by the belief that it had the moral high
ground and power of truth on its side.

But the influence of organized young Ukrainians in giving
time, legitimacy and bargaining power to Mr. Yushchenko
when he has needed all three, has also been clear. And the
role of young people in general and Pora in particular has
been one of the points of contention between the campaigns,
and between the nations behind each side.

Mr. Yanukovich's supporters, and Russophiles, have
portrayed the youth as naÔve tools of the West, or as
agents of foreign power, saying they have been seeded by
the United States and other interests to interfere with
Ukrainian political life.

Pora denies this flatly and says accepting foreign aid
would undermine the group's local credibility. The American
government also says that while it has provided $13.6
million in aid in recent years to encourage fair elections
here, Pora has not been sponsored. "We provide zero money,
directly or indirectly, to Pora," said an American diplomat
in Kiev.

Mr. Yanukovich's supporters are unconvinced, and say money
moves through American-sponsored non-government
organizations to Pora, and that larger outside forces also
have aligned to organize the youth here in ways helpful to
the West. The degree of its organization, they say, cannot
be coincidence.

"The money is not most important; there is enough money in
Ukraine," said Mikhail Pogrebinsky, a political scientist
and adviser to President Kuchma. "It is the moral support,
the media support, the technical support that is more
important."

Mr. Pogrebinsky said Pora had been trained by veterans of
revolution drives elsewhere. Pora says it has 3,000 formal
members among students in Kiev, and support from other
groups throughout the country whose precise size and
structure are unknown. "We organize people for actions, we
have temporary members, we grow for an event and shrink,"
Ms. Savytska said.

The group's discipline is evident in its details. It works
in cells, with different groups assuming different tasks -
media relations, security, organizing demonstrations,
logistics. It has rules - no public drinking, no drugs, no
response to provocation. It unequivocally speaks in terms
of non-violence, although in language reminiscent of
Socialist times Ukraine's security services have sometimes
referred to it as a terrorist group.

While its members have been buoyed by their success, that
is leavened by a realization that they may yet fail. Among
some there has been detectable worry, especially at
midweek, when Mr. Kuchma's government seemed more bold.
Some students speak of crackdowns should the opposition's
effort to break the ruling clan's grip on power fail. "The
reprisals will start, and people will be arrested," Ms.
Savytska said.

But they also say that one fact has been proved. No matter
how this crisis ends, the democracy movement has shown its
maturity and skill in Ukraine, and will last. "If
necessary, we will continue our struggle underground," said
Olga, 18, a Pora member and resident of Tent No. 1012, who
gave only her first name, citing concern about her safety.

The group's members said they expected that the political
crisis would attract new people to demonstrate, and part of
their task has been to keep them on the streets. One
neophyte was Petr Pavlishin, 29, a road worker from
Ternopil, who said he had never taken part in direct action
before, but now lives on Kreschatik Street, Tent No. 93.

"I didn't get into politics before, but I just couldn't
watch this," said Mr. Pavlishin, bundled against the cold.
Beside him in the tent were cartoon of juice, a grapefruit
and sleeping bags that Pora had provided to help coax him
to stay. Ms. Savytska said the demonstrators at the tents
were eating as often as seven times a day.

As the Parliament met Saturday to begin discussing a
solution to the crisis, more people were arriving in Kiev.
They said they had hitchhiked or come by bus, and said more
demonstrators were behind them, waiting for rides.

Asked how long they would stay in the cold, they said they
would try their best to remain. "As long as we can stand
it," said Tania Yucherain, 20, a student from Lviv.

Ruslan Yatechin, 22, a bus driver who had been part of
convoy picking up people on the highway to Kiev, used the
terms of struggle. "Until we win," he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/international/europe/28ukraine.html?ex=1102660887&ei=1&en=76cb23e8b7a153c7

Posted by rhosa at 11:41 AM | Comments (0)

November 22, 2004

Nov. 22

Today would have been my father's 89th birthday. From him and from my mother, born in the year "the women" "got" "the vote," I have a long but strange slice of 20th-century history that few my age have.

Today is also another day that shall live in.... Oddly or not, Nov. 22 is no longer necessarily associated immediately, or at all, with the day JFK was shot in Dallas. I haven't had time today even to listen, read, or hear what various media did by way of anniversary coverage or whether any official commemorations occured.

Y'all?

Here you'll find an audio archive of the original BBC report of the shooting of the president.

Among my many conversations today -- and I am nothing if not socialled out -- public memory resonances of the day came up only once. Maybe generation is -- please please please read Peter Dimock's A SHORT RHETORIC FOR LEAVING THE FAMILY -- forgetting's ultimate revenge.

Posted by rhosa at 06:36 PM | Comments (4)

November 21, 2004

The People Themselves

While the cover of this week's -- today's -- NYTBR trumpets THE POETRY ISSUE as its architectonic topos, the Letters section offers an exchange on constitutional law and (if I may) citizen criticism that warrants our attention. Poetry and law. Mmmmmmmmmmm. Like princesses and peas.

Happily, the NYTBR Letters exchange also reintroduces topoi from a number of discussions on The Blogora thus far.

Larry D. Kramer writes in response to the review of his "The People Themselves" by Lawrence W. Tribe; then Tribe responds to Kramer's letter. Lest this be understood as about The Larrys Themselves, the exchange offers powerful places for reasoning to begin -- or begin again -- about democracy, power, law, and rhetoric.

Read the exchange here. It'll probably be free and accesible for only a few days, however. If anyone accesses this after the link, er, ceases to be free, email me and I'll send you the texts from Lexis/Nexus. Or go there and get them all by yourself.

Since my undergrads read the NYTBR before each Tuesday's class, I'm particularly delighted that Larry and Lawrence are arguing about so many of the topoi we've tossed about this semester in our Literary Public Spheres class. Tuesday's class is our last session before they launch their final projects. We need explicitly to talk together about whether I am naive or dangerous or just plain stupid to teach rhetoric around the idea -- and practice -- that "The People Themselves" -- even if those people happen to be students -- can learn together how to rule.

Posted by rhosa at 10:37 AM | Comments (2)

November 19, 2004

Economic Rhetoric

A selection from an MSNBC.com story about Greenspan and the trade deficit:

"The persistence of bloated U.S. trade deficits over time can pose a risk to the U.S. economy, which thus far has proven resilient, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned Friday. Policy-makers must not get lulled into a sense of complacency, he said.measure of trade, called the current account deficit, swelled to an all-time high of $166.2 billion in the second quarter of this year, the most recent period for which this information is available.

Greenspan told a banking conference in Frankfurt the United States should cut its record budget gap to help narrow the shortfall in its current account and avoid a need to offer higher rates of return to retain foreign investment and painful economic consequences.

“Current account imbalances, per se, need not be a problem, but cumulative deficits ... raise more complex issues,” Greenspan said. A copy of his remarks was distributed in Washington.

So far, foreigners are willing to lend the United States money to finance the current account imbalances, Greenspan pointed out. The worry, however, is that at some point foreigners might suddenly lose interest in holding dollar-denominated investments. That could cause foreigners to unload investments in U.S. stocks and bonds, sending their prices plunging and interest rates soaring."

--Stocks slumped this morning because of these remarks. I will again raise my cry for rhetoricians to deal with economic issues. We need to learn from economists (of all ideological stripes) and figure out how to debate economic issues--free trade, the minimum wage, inflation, the deficit--in our classrooms. My immigrant grandparents had spirited discussions of free silver and the gold standard around the farm supper table. Many of us can discuss the intricacies of Deleuze and Guattari or Derrida, but don't understand how the Federal Reserve works. It's time to change.

Posted by jim at 11:42 AM | Comments (3)

November 16, 2004

The Blogora Itself 2

DHC asked a wonderful question, now buried in the bowels of The Blogora, about The Blogora's purposes and about the views of public discourse that animate The Blogora.

I wanted to put that question a little higher in The Blogora attention economy in order to urge people who are mystified by what they see here -- and what they don't -- to collaborate by asking questions about The Blogora. Hard questions and wide participation are the ways we'll make this space work for a variety of purposes.

Follow this link to questions about The Blogora; and/or add your own here.

Posted by rhosa at 07:45 AM | Comments (0)

November 09, 2004

Performative Rhetorics Course

A while back, i started putting together a syllabus for a grad course in "performative rhetorics"--on rhetoric's substantializing powers--and/but now...given everything...i'm considering tweaking the readings to include the "values" rhetorics we witnessed during this presidential campaigne. (I'm thinking this would fit loosely under the "hate speech" category.) Wondering if anyone has any ideas? I'll include a current draft of the syllabus below, pre-tweaking.

Also, anybody else considering putting together a course that examines the rhetorical moves made in this election?

Performative Rhetorics

In the beginning was the deed.
–Goethe Faust

Speech is in fact a gift of language, and language is not immaterial. It is a subtle body, but body it is.
–Jacques Lacan, "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis"

Valerie Solanas, who took no prisoners, took pleasure in the injurious effects of language and, with Lacanian precision, understood that words are bodies that can be hurled at the other, they can land in the psyche or explode in the soma. A hurtful utterance can give you hives, make you want to throw up, put a dent in your appetite, or summon up any number of somatic responses and physical collapses.
–Avital Ronell, "Deviant Payback: The Aims of Valerie Solanas"

In his 1955 Harvard lectures, published posthumously in 1962 as How to do Things With Words, J. L. Austin outlined the basic tenets of speech-act theory in its contemporary form, offering a tentative but perhaps necessary distinction between the "constative" and "performative" functions of language. While the constative utterance offers a statement that describes or articulates "what is," the performative utterance produces, transforms, institutes. Austin for the most part located performative language within the realm of intentional consciousness and limited his analyses to instances of "relative purity," excluding citations of performative speech (e.g., those by "an actor in a play")--a position Derrida famously deconstructs. Nonetheless, Austin's lectures demonstrated that performative utterances collapse the distinction between saying and doing, severely problematizing the conception of language as a transcendental structure of meaning (what Saussure calls langue). Again.

What currently goes by the name speech-act theory, in other words, can be understood as the latest articulation in a centuries old debate between philosophy and rhetoric. What's in question, to paraphrase Nietzsche, is whether there is any (transcendental) being behind concrete acts of saying (what Saussure calls parole). Whereas John Searle attempts in Speech Acts to systematize Austin's subversive insights within a logical framework, arguing that "an adequate study of speech acts is a study of langue," many of the most influential contemporary thinkers have resisted this effort, situating Austin's lectures on the side of (sophistic) rhetoric, as a re-affirmation of the awesome and undeniable positing power of language (as parole).

In this course, we will zero in on rhetoric's substantializing effects, on its capacity for concrete manifestation via, for example, hate speech, (psycho)analytic speech, poetic speech, and political speech. We won't attempt any sort of comprehensive approach but will instead begin with Gorgias and Plato, leap ahead to Austin and his contemporary interlocutors, and then spread out into linguistic avenues not so explicitly associated with speech-act theory. Freud, for example, had his own theory of performative linguistics, as did Althusser.

Potential Readings:
Gorgias. "Encomium of Helen"
Plato. Phaedrus
J. L. Austin. How to do things with Words.
John Searle. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language.
Jacques Derrida. Limited Inc.
Kenneth Burke. Selections from Language as Symbolic Action and Rhetoric of Motives
Louis Althusser. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”
Judith Butler. Excitable Speech
Avital Ronell. "Deviant Payback," "On the Unrelenting Creepiness of Childhood: Lyotard Kid-Tested," and "The Sujet Suppositaire"
Foucault. Fearless Speech
J. Hillis Miller. Speech Acts in Literature
Paul de Man. "Autobiography as Defacement"
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. "Postulates of Linguistics" from A Thousand Plateaus.
Sigmund Freud. Three Case Histories and Studies in Hysteria
Jacques Lacan. “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis.”
Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen. “Analytic Speech: From a Restricted to a General Rhetoric.”
Ruth Leys. “Freud and Trauma.”
Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters. Selections from Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria.

Posted by ddd at 05:21 AM | Comments (2)

November 06, 2004

21st-Century Rhetorical Pedagogies, Grover Norquist, and Dissent as "Peeing on the Furniture"

How has this election -- its outcome, or comments about it, comments that might suggest that I/we are naive (at best) for continuing to teach rhetoric as a norm as well as a practice -- potentially changed the way you think about teaching rhetoric?

To stoke yer thinking, I offer something I heard on NOW With Bill Moyers last night. They didn't cite the source, but I found and verified the quote:

from Leiby's Reliable Source in the Washington Post, Nov 4:

"Many wonder what it will take to restore social civility to Washington, to get Republicans and Democrats mingling again. Rock-ribbed Republican Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, proffered a solution, telling us that Democrats must accept the finality of their powerlessness.

"'Once the minority of the House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they've been fixed, then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful. They don't go around peeing on the furniture and such.'"

This has made me wonder yet again about whether I'm naive -- or worse -- for teaching rhetoric as, at least in part, a practice of reason-giving and conclusion-earning. As reasonable. As norm as well as practice.

Maybe Norquist's quote is about humor more than it is about rhetoric. But irony is almost always about power, and what I hear here is power and contempt more than humor. It is, in any case, additional evidence that we no longer live in a democracy, at least not by certain criteria....

On his website, Leiby had more context to offer about the Norquist quote that he ran in his print column (under the heading "Squibs," a printjourn word that has nearly passed from the language). Leiby was responding to a writer from Bethesda, who was in mourning about the results of the election:

"Sorry about that, Bethesda, but you're part of the 48 percent 'fringe' in this country, and you'd just better get used to it. You and the other 55.6 million Kerry voters just have to accept your status as a marginalized minority. You don't belong. You might also take solace in Grover Norquist's comment in my column today about how Democrats need to behave:

"'Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they've been fixed, then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful. They don't go around peeing on the furniture and such.'" Norquist assured us that he meant neutered "'psychologically'" and his metaphor was "'facetious.'

Of course: Let the healing begin."

For more on NOW With Bill Moyers (soon to be shortened to 30 minutes/week to make more room on public television for Tucker Carlson), see http://www.pbs.org/now/thisweek/index.html .

Posted by rhosa at 11:05 AM | Comments (3)

November 05, 2004

A 20th Century Theory Canon

I'm doing my book orders for spring. I'm teaching a seminar on 20th century rhetorical theory. As usual, I can't decide whether to go for depth or breadth. The last time I taught it I used an extended case study of the Salem witchcraft trials as a basis for applying/comparing different theories, and then divided the course into what I consider to be the 3 main trajectories of 20th century rhetorical theory: argument (Perelman, Toulmin), dramatism (Burke), and power/knowledge (Foucault). That seemed to work all right, although it left out what I personally find to be the richest recent work: rhetoric of science (Gross), politics (Hariman's Political Style), law (James Boyd White), and economics (Deirdre McCloskey).

So I thought I'd pose a desert-island question for the readers of Blogora. If you had to list the 10 most important works in rhetorical theory of the 20th century, what would they be?

My list:

Kenneth Burke, A Grammar and Rhetoric of Motives
Richard Weaver, Visions of Order and The Ethics of Rhetoric
Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric
Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Robert Hariman, Political Style
Thomas B. Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture
James Crosswhite, The Rhetoric of Reason
Deirdre McCloskey, The Rhetoric of Economics
James Boyd White, When Words Lose Their Meanings
Alan Gross, The Rhetoric of Science

(I will add that I am not including the work of theorists who have been important for theorizing rhetoric, e.g. Foucault or Althusser, who simply did not write with any awareness of the rhetorical problematic.)

Posted by jim at 09:53 PM | Comments (3)

November 04, 2004

Youth Vote 2004 ... or not?

Did more young people (18-24 or 18-30) show up to vote this year?

And what was the effect, if they did or didn't?

Despite the many "conclusions" about the youth vote on blogs, tv, and in print -- and even the reports from the likes of CIRCLE -- it's too early to tell how many young people actually voted and how that compares to previous elections. Many college students, for instance, vote absentee, and not all of those votes have been counted yet.

Talk with your students not only about their individual and classroom-group choices of whether or not they voted and why but also about how to find and verify data about the youth vote. And, of course, talk about the value of the vote -- or its lack. And about What It All Means.

I spent a few hours after my undergrad class this morning looking around Lexis/Nexis and the web for data. The topos of the youth vote came up in class today, and several of us had heard different conclusions last night and this morning in media reports....

Probably the most reliable source, CIRLE (http://www.civicyouth.org/) has two potential problems: 1) reliance on exit polling data and 2) self-congratulation that might skew results. Here's the full report: http://www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/Release_Turnout2004.pdf

CIRCLE's self-congrats aren't as bad as World Wrestling Entertainment's "SmackDown the Vote" report (http://vote.wwe.com/news/SYV_Feats_Record.html).

It is possible, for some of the same reasons that ddd posted about this morning, that we might never get a clear idea of whether young people voted more or became otherwise more engaged in this year's federal election or local campaigns.

Meanwhile, here are some additional places to look for data and commentaries. Mostly commentaries.

The New York Sun, November 4, 2004, EDITORIAL & OPINION; Pg. 10, Left With Nothing, Jim Geraghty

USA TODAY, November 4, 2004, FIRST EDITION, EDIT;, Pg. 27A, The youth vote: It didn't rock, Laura Vanderkam

The Toronto Star, November 4, 2004, NEWS; Pg. A12, Rock the Vote venture couldn't quite swing it, Murray Whyte, Toronto Star, CLEVELAND

The New York Sun, November 4, 2004 Thursday, DECISION 2004; Pg. 7, 580
words, Young Voters Let Down Kerry, By ERIC WOLFF, Staff Reporter of the Sun

Ottawa Citizen, November 4, 2004 Thursday, Final Edition, NEWS; Pg. A8, 866 words, Vote or die? Yeah, whatever: Despite their own best intentions and being targeted by aggressive marketing campaigns, cynical American youth continue to shun the political process, writes Joanne Laucius.

The Baltimore Sun, November 4, 2004 Thursday, FINAL Edition, Pg. 21A, 787 words, Under-30 turnout biggest since the election in 1992; Majority in age group chose Kerry for president, according to exit polls; YOUTH VOTE; ELECTION 2004; THE RESULTS -- PRESIDENT, Jason Song, Mary Carole McCauley and Childs Walker

Cox News Service, November 3, 2004, National Political, 855 words, YOUTH VOTE JUMPS SHARPLY OVER 2000, MIKE WILLIAMS, MIAMI HERALD.

PR Newswire, November 3, 2004, NATIONAL POLITICAL NEWS, Declare Yourself Contributes to Sharp Increase in Youth Voter Turnout on
Election Day; Surpasses Goal of 20 Million Young Voters, LOS ANGELES, Nov. 3

Posted by rhosa at 12:17 PM | Comments (1)

November 03, 2004

Professional Ethics

I again today am bedeviled by an ethical question that has bothered me my entire professional life: to what extent should I reveal my own personal political convictions in class? For about 15 years I have adopted the rule to keep my undergraduate students guessing about my beliefs while being quite open in my graduate classes. The only belief I regularly discuss openly is my First Amendment absolutism. I decided on this policy for two reasons: 1) Too many students adapt to professorial prejudice and thus fail to think for themselves; 2) My reluctance to use my "power" to persuade(such as it is--I can't get them to do the assigned reading 2/3 of the time, much less brainwash them). Since moving to Texas and teaching at what the Princeton Review ranks as the number one conservative campus in the U.S. (above both Brigham Young and Liberty University), I have also done so for reasons of prudence. There are crazy groups out there, like the Young Conservatives of Texas, that target faculty who take controversial views.

But what do I do today if students ask me for my take on the election?

A related question has to do with Blogora itself. I have been waiting for someone to raise the accusation of "liberal bias" about the postings thus far. To which I respond: it is not hard to create unanimity in a professional group when you consistently attack the values they stand for: freedom of speech, science and the Enlightenment, reasoned argument. There are plenty of intelligent British-style conservatives and libertarians out there in rhetoric-land. I am pretty sure that Tri-Delt, Rhosa, and I differ significantly amongst ourselves with respect to politics and pedagogy--not to mention rhetorical theory. So we hope to hear from opposing views across the political and cultural spectrum. Really.

Posted by jim at 07:41 AM | Comments (3)

November 02, 2004

Ideologies in U.S. Public Discourse

In teaching courses about political rhetoric over the years, I have discovered that students do not have a clear sense of the differing political positions out there in the world of partisan politics. If they listen to Rush Limbaugh, they believe that anyone who takes a position somewhere slightly to the left of George H.W. Bush is a "liberal." Most students don't know that the most cogent arguments against the Iraq War have generally been made from the "paleoconservatives" such as Patrick Buchanan and Justin Raimondo. Raimondo's website: http://www.antiwar.com is an indispensable source of worldwide commentary on the war and on Middle East policy.

One beef I have with many rhetoric texts, especially argumentation textbooks, is their "formalism." That is, they provide checklists for tests of evidence, fallacies, argument patterns, and so on, but do not start with naturally occurring public argument. In recent years I have been working on the following handout, which lays out the main political ideologies in the U.S. from right to left, differentiating them primarily in terms of their views on three core issues: Culture, the Economy, and Foreign Policy. Feel free to make use of this as you wish; suggestions for improvement are welcome.

A. Traditionalists or “Paleoconservatives” (Buchanan, Schlafly, Eagle Forum, Mises Institute, League of the South, American Conservative, Chronicles of Culture)

CULTURE 1. Cultural conservatives (religious, regionalist, anti-immigration, anti-abortion)
ECONOMY 2. Pro-free market but Anti-big business (against free trade, for
economic nationalism)
FOREIGN POLICY 3. More isolationist/Against Iraq War/anti-Israel

4. Useful websites:
http://www.amconmag.com
http://www.antiwar.com

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org

B. Libertarians/Classical Liberals (Milton Friedman, Cato Institute, Reason)
1. Culturally indifferent (often secular, pro-choice, pro-gay rights)
2. Economic liberty comes first (vouchers, deregulation)
3. Strong defense but noninterventionist (some opposed VN War)
4. Useful websites:
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org

C. Fusionists (Frank Meyer, Wm F. Buckley, Jr.; mainstream Republicans, National Review): so-called because try to combine A and B
1. Moderate cultural conservatism
2. Free market economics
3. Strong anti-Communism/internationalist, although with a strongly "realist" approach to foreign policy, as opposed to the more "Wilsonian" (export democracy) approach of the neocons
4. Useful websites: http://www.nationalreview.com

D. Neoconservatives / “National Greatness conservatives” (Norman and John Podhoretz, Bill Kristol, Weekly Standard, Commentary)
1. Moderate cultural conservatism (more on education than on abortion/religion--appeal to Jewish intellectuals)
2. Moderate welfare state
3. Fiercely anti-Communist/internationalist/pro-Israel; "neocons" in Bush Administration were primary partisans of Iraq War
4. Useful websites:
http://www.weeklystandard.com
http://www.commentarymagazine.com

E. “New Democrats” (Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Democratic Leadership Council, New Republic)
1. “Socially liberal”: Moderate feminist, gay rights, etc.
2. Pro-market, strong free-trade, but defend stronger "safety net" for the poor; relatively indifferent to the labor movement; in favor of "Reinventing government": more efficient military and federal government.
3. Highly “moral” tone to foreign policy; "Wilsonian" interventionists
4. Useful websites: http://www.tnr.com

F. Social Democrats (Kennedy, Wellstone, American Prospect; Nation)
1. Strongly feminist, gay rights, etc.
2. Strong defender of welfare state: national health insurance, etc.; strong ties to labor movement
3. Internationalist, but skeptical of American interventionism
4. Useful websites:
http://www.prospect.org
http://www.thenation.com

G. “Greens”/Naderites (ZNet, CounterPunch, Progressive)
1. Strongly feminist, gay rights, etc., but have an emphasis on localism that at times unites them with paleoconservatives
2. Economic views defined mostly by hostility to big business and free trade (WTO protests)
3. Highly critical of US foreign policy, bordering on isolationist
4. Useful websites:
http://www.counterpunch.org
http://www.progressive.org
http://www.zmag.org

Posted by jim at 02:52 PM | Comments (2)