At the beginning of the semester, Dr. Yancey gave each of us our own “God term” (just kidding--or am I?). I was presented with logic as my term since, I presume, the nature of logic in relation to rhetoric fascinates me. The degree to which rhetoric influences logic appears to be a constant subject of debate among various rhetoricians. Plato saw rhetoric as deriving from the transcendent--thus logical thought arose from understanding Truth. For Aristotle, logos was one of the three vital components of rhetoric; however, Aristotle believed rhetoric dealt with issues that could not arrive at conclusions through pure reasoning and/or logic. Both Plato and Aristotle, though, concluded that there was Truth and that it could be logically arrived at, although to various degrees. Hence, rhetoric existed in relation to logic--it either was a conduit to convey logical Truth (Plato) or a means to resolve contested issues when “pure” logic was not applicable (Aristotle). Yet, Foucault possesses a “God term” that, in my estimation, creates a different relationship between logic and rhetoric--power.
Since most of Foucault’s theories are so intrinsically connected to issues of power, he inverts the relationship between rhetoric and logic. They are neither separate nor does true rhetoric derive from logic; in Foucault’s philosophy, rhetoric constructs logic. The will to truth is the most prominent system of exclusion in Foucault’s theories. As Foucault notes, “‘True’ discourse, freed from desire and power by the necessity of its form, cannot recognize the will to truth which pervades it; and the will to truth, having imposed itself on us for a very long time, is such that the truth it wants cannot fail to mask it” (1463). The will to truth then is always hidden under the guise of Truth.
The institutions and those in authority set the parameters for the quest for truth. In this manner, what is considered logical is oftentimes a result of the forces of power that have established rhetorically the means of logic for a given discourse. This can be seen historically in the conflict between religion and science--both establish different logical methods for arriving at truth and, in many ways, this will to truth is hidden in both discourses. Those who wield power, influence, and authority in a given domain establish systems of logic through rhetorical means.
This will to truth can be seen somewhat in our own discipline I would contend. For Rhetoric and Composition, for a period, the will to truth and the logical means for understanding resided in the cognitive processes of the individual writer: most research and theory during that period operate on this assumption. The social turn shifted this emphasis as certain scholars with divergent theories established authority and gained prominence. Even today, if I understood the texts for reading group correctly (and that is a big if), then certain scholars are pushing for post-human philosophies to become the primary will to truth.
In essence, Foucault shifted the relationship between logic and rhetoric. Logic, for many classical (and some modern) rhetoricians, was either separate of rhetoric or drove effective, “truthful” rhetoric. With Foucault, however, this relationship is reversed. If power is his “God term,” than rhetoric possesses the greater power in relationship with logic. Logic is merely the established way of arriving at truth for a contingent discourse, always contingent on the ideologies, politics, and authorities of that given discourse.
Argument
“This repeatable materiality that characterizes the enunciative function reveals the statement as a specific and paradoxical object, but also as one of those objects that men produce, manipulate, use, transform, exchange, combine, decompose and recompose, and possible destroy. Instead of being something said once and for all-- and lost in the past like the result of battle, a geological catastrophe, or the death of a king--the statement, as it emerges in its materiality, appears with a status, enters various networks and various fields of use, is subjected to transferences or modifications, is integrated into operations and strategies in which its identity is maintained or effaced” (pg 1460).
This rather large quote gets down to the core of what Foucault believes to be the essence and power of argument. Argument is the term that I like to focus on because it allows me to shift the way I approach certain readings. With Foucault, for example, I note how discursive his argument on rhetoric, or how he frames it, discourse, is. The idea of unity in his argument is seen in both The Archeology of Knowledge as well as The Order of Discourse, but this quote I believe points to the claim that discourse has a certain unity that carries from circumstance to circumstance not because it is transcendent but because it is transformed and manipulated from an original thought.
His notations in The Archeology of Knowledge in psychopathy give an example of how he then defines unity later on in the text. He uses this emerging science to note that while old facts have been changed and theories tested, that the foundation of the science stays the same, showing the unity of discourse that paradoxically is both discursive and yet transcendent.
In The Order of Discourse, Foucault shifts to noting society’s breech on such a pure thing as discourse (in the sense of its ideal truth); he argues that “in every society that production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organized, and redistributed by a certain number of procedures...” (pg. 1461). He lists these, including prohibition, division of discourses, and the divide between truth and falsity as some of the external exclusion processes. It is interesting, then, to juxtapose the idea of prohibition and the role of society with the argument of unity that Foucault writes.
In essence, then, unity of discourse, or the natural progression of one original idea to the transformation of that idea, can be stopped by the prohibition, or otherwise confinement of that idea, by society.
Audience Addressed
And then there is the question of audience. When we compare Foucault with the ancients, it seems that he actually has more in common with Plato than with Aristotle, because he, like Plato, seems more concerned with the “truth” than constructing understandings by addressing an audience. As stated before, for Foucault, truth is linked to power, and he rejects the idea that language is merely dressing for thought (1469). Where Plato was interested, though, in the transcendent realities behind language, Foucault is interested in language itself. But Plato was a reluctant rhetorician, and so Foucault seems to be.
On the other hand, we can easily read rhetoric into Foucault. For if Foucault seems little interested in audience, and even persuasion, and instead, he seeks the underlying structures of language, which point to the underlying structures of knowledge, he still, as we noted earlier, acknowledges the power of “society” to shape and frame discourse. Is this Foucault’s euphemism for audience?
Yet for all of that, Foucault approaches knowledge from an entirely different direction than Plato. While Plato, in the Phaedrus, approaches the relationship between rhetoric and knowledge in terms of dialogue and myth, Foucault starts with the most basic unit of knowledge: the statement. He denies that a statement is reducible to a proposition (1446), and even denies that it must possess a logical referent (1450-1451). Instead, he claims that a statement is linked to a “referential” that is made up of “laws of possibility, rules of existence for the objects that are named, designated, or described within it, and for the relations that are affirmed and denied in it” (1451-1452). And a statement, finally, must be material (1457-1460).
And yet, as he argues in The Order of Discourse
...in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected,
organized, and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose role is to ward
off its power and dangers, to gain mastery over its chance events, and evade its
ponderous, formidable materiality (1461).
This is accomplished by “procedures of exclusion,” which include prohibition, division and rejection, and the will to power (1461-1463). So we are back to the idea of language and power: these structures (referentials) seem to consist of power relations that delimit discourse, and shape what counts as knowledge. Yet for all of that, “society” is the source of these procedures, so if we see society as consisting, in part, of audiences, perhaps Foucault is closer to Aristotle than he might think.
Human Beings
Apparently rhetoric means very different things to Aristotle, Plato, and Foucault. Here I aim to use my own “God term” – “human beings” – to compare their theories related to rhetoric and try to define rhetoric on the basis of this comparison. As a “God term,” “human beings” can help us to see specifically the huge difference between Aristotle, Plato, and Foucault. While Plato emphasizes leading the soul to transcendent truth, and valuing logic (especially enthymemes), Aristotle realizes that successful persuasion relies to a great extent on the understanding of human character and emotional appeals, Foucault turns to discourse, which in his view is more about relations, functions, positions, and conditions – things exterior to human beings and constraining what and how human beings write and speak.
An important part of both Plato and Aristotle’s theories is about human beings. For Plato, real rhetoric connects human beings to God. In his theory, human beings are placed in a hierarchy. He believes in transcendent truth and absolute knowledge, which exists only in God’s world. Actually everyone, according to Plato, has seen that world and can remember it if inspired. The key lies in his concept, the soul. In Phaedrus, Socrates views the soul as ungenerated and immortal (148). On the other hand, the soul is also complex. Comparing it to a pair of horses and a charioteer, Socrates points out that desire, the unruly horse, is dangerous and needs to be controlled. With lost souls, people may lose the opportunity to remember the truth and become beasts at last (150). Rhetoric, as “the art of persuasion,” “an art which leads the soul by means of words” (157), can “produce conviction in the soul” (163) to pursue the truth (not “what seems to be true” (156)) and please God. Hence, rhetoric is a powerful means for divine purposes, which can redeem human beings from degeneration.
Different from Plato who emphasizes human beings’ inner world (the soul) and spiritual transcendence, Aristotle pays more attention to the practice of rhetoric. Defining rhetoric as the “modes of persuasion” (179), Aristotle seems more interested in different means to persuade people. However, he does not ignore the subjectivity of rhetoric and also views it as “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion” (181). Rhetoric, in this sense, also includes human beings’ ability to discover modes of persuasion, though in Aristotle’s time, this practice is limited to a small group of people. Actually in Rhetoric Aristotle constructs a different hierarchy, according to the roles people play in persuasion. This time the focus is no longer the relationship between human beings and God, but human beings themselves. While in Plato’s Phaedrus, human beings’ existence is defined by God and different groups of people have different social statuses accordingly (for example, a philosopher is closest to God’s world and therefore has the highest status), Aristotle’s theory directs our attention to the speaker and the hearer (the audience). His speaker, who has learned various techniques about persuasion, especially syllogisms, is intellectually superior to the hearer, as Aristotle assumes “an audience of untrained thinkers” (183). (It doesn’t mean the audience cannot have power: in Aristotle’s examples, a listener may be a judge who will make important decisions.) This assumption and the awareness of the importance of audience, who “determines the speech’s end and object” (185), reflect how Aristotle sees rhetoric and his understanding of human beings. In Aristotle’s eye, logic (especially enthymemes) is most valued. A considerable part of Rhetoric is about logical argument. He probably believes that reasoning is what really defines human beings: “the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs” (181). However, he doesn’t treat human beings simply as “rational being” (175); because persuasion is central to his rhetoric, he admits and studies the irrational part of human beings. He recognizes emotions as an important power, “feelings that so change men as to affect their judgments”(214). He also discusses different types of human beings and examines people’s motives as well as characteristics, implying the importance of understanding human nature for successful persuasion. Therefore, Aristotle’s rhetoric refers to different modes of persuasion based on the complexity of human beings.
As an important philosopher of the 20th century, Foucault turns to what constrains human beings’ communication by redefining the key term “discourse.” His theory actually challenges Plato and Aristotle’s theories in different ways. For example, when Plato uses different discourses about love to teach truth and real rhetoric and points out desire as a negative power in the soul, Foucault radically changes the concept of discourse, claiming that discursive relations characterize “discourse itself as a practice” (1440) and discourse is “the object of desire” (1461). That is, instead of focusing on the redemption of human beings, Foucault examines discourse itself and its operation, concluding that there is not absolute truth but “a discourse of truth” (1463), “the will to truth” (1462). When Foucault views statement as “a function that cuts across a domain of structures and possible unities” (1449), it also implicitly questions Aristotle’s theory about logical argument, which is based on syllogism and propositions.
Through centering on discourse as a practice, Foucault’s rhetoric highlights the conditions, relations, and restraints of human beings’ communication. He does not ignore human beings as the subject, but in a certain sense, considering the subject obscures the essence of discourse and the struggle for power in it. “Perhaps the idea of the founding subject is a way of eliding the reality of discourse.” (1469) Understandably, Foucault pays close attention to the subject’s situation and function instead of individuals. For instance, “If, in clinical discourse, the doctor is in turn the sovereign, direct questioner… it is because a whole group of relations is involved” (1443). He makes it clear that his discourse is not about “the majestically unfolding manifestation of a thinking, knowing, speaking subject, but, on the contrary, a totality, in which the dispersion of the subject and his discontinuity with himself may be determined” (1444). In other words, his theory answers how and why the subject is placed in a particular position, getting involved in different relations. Hence, when Foucault talks about the subject of the statement, he is more interested in the function of the subject (“It is a particular, vacant place that may in fact be filled by different individuals” (1454)), and when he talks about the author, he is more interested in the function of the author (“a principle of grouping of discourses, conceived as the unity and origin of their meanings, as the focus of their coherence” (1465)). In short, we can say individuals disappear in Foucault’s examination, but consequently the conditions and restraints of human beings’ discourses surface in rhetoric.
Presence is Present, Maybe
Unlike some of the rhetoricians we’ve discussed earlier in the semester, Foucault doesn’t really seem interested in developing or discussing the art of persuasion. Instead, Foucault’s interest is in the underlying structures of knowledge, that give rise to and uphold the underlying structures of language. Because of this, presence—in the way that I am familiar with the term—does not really appear in The Archaeology of Knowledge and On the Order of Discourse. In both of these works, Foucault never discusses using certain methods of speaking or stylistic choices (like vivid language) to take up more “space” in the audience’s mind. That being said, I think you can find what I referred to last class (when discussing Burke) as meta-presence.
In the two excerpts we read, Foucault isn’t discussing things that have a larger, or smaller presence in our (or our audience’s) minds, and how to utilize them in order to persuade. Instead, he is discussing the way that relations of power constrain and shape discourse—the the way that “discourse is at once controlled, selected, organized, and redistributed by a certain number of procedures...” (1461). Ultimately, it seems like Foucault is not concerned with the things that have presence, rather he is concerned with the structures that make presence possible: the relations of power and structures of knowledge that ultimately form the way we perceive, and talk about, the world around us. In The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault states that
...one
cannot speak of anything at any time; it is not easy to say something
new; it is not enough for us to open our eyes, to pay attention, or to
be aware, for new objects suddenly to light up and emerge out of the
ground” (1439).
It is the procedures that control, select, organize, and redistribute discourse (1461) that make it possible for us to “say something new” (1439). Without these procedures, there would be no need for presence, because there would be nothing to talk about.
Foucault uses the example of psychopathology in the 19th century, to show how “surfaces of... emergence,” the “authorities of delimitation,” and the “grids of specification” work together to change the way that madness was perceived in the field of medicine and in turn the judicial system (pg. 1438). As I understand it, the interplay of these three systems made it possible for the relationship between madness and criminality to be studied, and ultimately changed the way we perceived and discussed criminality. This example also shows how presence is affected, because in changing the way we perceive madness and criminality, we also change the how much presence—or the persuasiveness—the madness defense, or offense, is in court.
In order by author: Bruce, Katie, David, Jie Liu, and Jeff
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