Classical Rhetoric and/as Digital Rhetoric

     Lunsford and Ede provide a revised understanding of the rhetorical tradition, one in which the clear boundaries between classical and modern rhetoric dissolve through a re-examination of the theories and contributions of Aristotle. Aristotle, they claim, does not merely address persuasion as the manipulation of an audience to the will of the reader. Instead, they suggest “[his] metaphysics intrinsically rejects exploitative or ‘monologic’ communication from speaker to listener” (41). This reductive understanding of Aristotle is the direct result of divorcing his Rhetoric from the rest of his philosophy. Too, a reductive positioning of Aristotle within the tradition is not the fault of Aristotle’s theory, but rather a fault in historical methodology – they note a new way of doing history would be to position ourselves in consonance with the past instead of opposition. I’m not entirely sure what that would look like (especially in terms of Ramus), but I’d like to see that proposition carried over to the rest of our key thinkers. This piece made me wonder what the study of Rhetoric might be if we troubled our canonical categories of figures, movements, and periods. Lunsford and Ede’s assertions about the traditional positioning of Aristotle in a rhetorical education are fair (I must confess that, before this article, my thoughts on Aristotle and Plato were the exact opposite of Josh’s – I was not a big fan). However, a knowledge and understanding of Aristotle is dependent upon texts and experiences. It seems, then, that if we really want to challenge the dominant understanding of this classical thinker, we need a more robust representation of his philosophy in the canon.

    I am hesitant, however, to buy into all aspects of their revised distinction. Particularly, the claim stating that the focus of rhetoric in the modern period as the rhetoric of print gives me pause. Rhetoric, in all times and in all movements, has addressed multiple modes of meaning making, including the body as a mode of performance, delivery, and reception. It seems like a glaring gap to not include a discussion of technology, especially when they claim of Aristotle, that “he viewed language as the medium through which judgments about the world are communicated” (45). The medium of rhetoric matters; the technologies of rhetoric matter. The intersection of those two need to be incorporated into this repositioning of Aristotle.

     Too, I’m uncertain what Lunsford and Ede mean when they say, “despite the efforts of modern rhetoricians, we lack any systematic, generally accepted theory to inform current practice” (45). Do we not have a canon? Do we not have a rhetorical tradition? Can we not expect rhetorical theory classes across the country to include the same 2-3 texts regardless of the focus, history, historiography, and methodology of the instructor/program? I agree that there is not one central theory of rhetoric, that we all share different understandings of what it means to “do” rhetoric, but isn’t that we want? And if not, why?

     Zappen makes several interesting points about digital rhetoric. What I found most provocative was his suggestion that we have the theoretical pieces of a digital rhetoric, but that we lack any productive theory, because it is difficult to adapt a 2,000-year old rhetorical tradition to modern technologies. This is, in part, why rhetoric must be extended beyond persuasion for these spaces and technologies. I think Zappen raises an interesting question that gets at what digital rhetoric might look like: what if, he asks “scientific inquiry were situated within the context of digital spaces with the characteristics and potential outcomes and the strategies of self-expressions, participation, and collaboration we now associate with these spaces” (323)? However, are these not the questions that we should ask of rhetoric and the voice? Of rhetoric and the scroll? Of rhetoric and the manuscript codex? Technologies and histories are constructed of layers. To understand better digital rhetoric(s), we might need to ask these questions of rhetoric in its previous iterations.