Josh and I discussed his felt difficulty with my attitude toward Aristotle's rhetoric a couple of weeks ago, and in that conversation, I was willing to go with him on the idea that I had been thinking about Rhetoric in isolation rather than in the context of a larger philosophical system. And I was pleased to see that appear in Lunsford and Ede's chapter.
I follow their premise -- that the artistic pisteis do not work in isolation but instead work with enthymeme and example -- "whereby individuals unite all their resources - intellect, will, and emotion - in communicating with one another." That premise does dissolve some of the distinctions I describe in the first paragraph.
Distinction one: man is rationale living in a cohesive society // man is a symbol-using animal living in a fragmented society || This is really two claims, and I don't care for them being lumped together. First, based on the contextualizing readings, I knew that Greece was in some turmoil, and that turmoil was one of the only reasons that I could emphathize with Plato's rhetoric. But I do follow their reading of the second distinction (rational man v. symbol-using animal). Following their premises, if will and emotion are integrated and organized in constructing enthymeme, humans are not a solely rational beings. Okay.
Likewise, based on their reading of pisteis, the refutation of distinction two follows (emphasis on logic/emotion). However, I had not tracked an emphasis on emotion but an emotion on ethos. Identification works on the basis of ethos. Foucault's discourse is based in ethos: "who is speaking? Who is qualified to do so? Who derives from it his own special quality?" But there is still a dissolved boundary is modern rhetoric emphasizes ethos as opposed to logos.
I am not willing to go with them on the last two points: agonistic/cooperative and persuasion/communication. Because of where classical rhetoric took place (in institutionalized occasions) where persuasion was the goal and because of whose voices were left out of this rhetoric and the particular kinds of means that they had to draw from to achieve their goals (e.g. the vernacular, the body, and experience), classical rhetoric was not cooperative. Rhetor and audience may both have "joint access to knowledge" as Ede and Lunsford suggest, but I think that knowledge begs for qualitification. Namely, it has not historically been the case that the rhetor/audience have access to the same knowledge, and that matters.
To sum: Some distinctions hold. Because of the places where classical rhetoric took place and because of the people that engaged in these rhetorics, it was agonistic insofar as the goal of the rhetoric was to effectively persuade. And because of modern rhetoric's emphasis on the social (dialogism and heteroglossia) and on ideologies (institutions) and because of the people and places that modern rhetoric includes, modern rhetoric is more cooperative and attends communication broadly construed.
There is a lot to like about the digital, and like Zappen, I am hopeful. I am reminded of McKee and DeVoss's editor's note in the C&C anniversary issue: "First, we are participants in the discourses of technology, which carry with them the assumptions that technology is good and that it will bring good." The possibilities for technologies that Zappen outlines: to foster creative collaborations, to promote the development of scientific communities, to produce new ideas and significant research results, to cultivate interest, disseminate information, and encourage discussion on current issues between experts and non-experts. That is the stuff that matters: that is egalitarian access to knowledge AND knowledge-making. And despite the more porous distinctions that Ede and Lunsford make between the classical and the modern, the digital necessitates revision.
- L&E: Rhetoric has the potential to clarify and inform activities in numerous fields of knowledge.
- Yes, but what are the boundaries of those fields? Are fields still definable in the same ways? If a field or a discipline is "defined by a domain of objects, a set of methods, a corpus of propositions considered to be true, and a play of rules and definitions," (Foucault) and in the context of Web II, those objects, methods, propositions, and definitions are mediated by "computer structures and operations through which we represent ourselves to others," is rhetoric necessarily digital, based in computer structures? If so, rhetoric includes discoursive practices involving nonhuman entities, placing rhetoric more squarely in the realm of communication that is not always based in communication between rhetor/audience especially where a communicator is not making user-end objects.
- L&E: Rhetoric provides a dynamic methodology whereby rhetor and audience may jointly have access to knowledge.
- Again, isn't it the computer structures that create joint access to knowledge and not a methodology supplied by rhetoric. If supplying a methodology is a goal of rhetoric and a methodology isn't needed to attain access, how does rhetoric change? Is its project to answer questions related to already-existing practices, and what would it take to inform the construction of computer structures -- the discursive spaces where people make meaning and knowledge?
- L&E: Man unites reason and emotion to communicate
- How do sequences, versions, processes of selection, and operations add to the means at the rhetor's disposal?
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