Monday, February 11, 2008

Comment here of Fish's "Rhetoric"

Sean will lead the discussion on this essay.
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1 comment:

sean ottosen said...

The struggle between rhetoric and the anti-rhetorical stance falls under three basic binary oppositions: 1. Truth that exists independently of perspective OR Truth that emerges, precisely, from an established point of view. 2. True knowledge that exists apart from a system of belief OR True knowledge which is “incomplete or impartial” because it is derived from another system of belief. 3. Self or self consciousness turned outward, attaching itself to an ideal truth or true knowledge OR Self or self consciousness turned inward, towards the prejudices which inform every thought, word, or action.

The history of Western thought, stemming from these binary oppositions, and which continues today, is the result of a particular disagreement. “The quarrel between rhetorical and foundational (an anti-rhetorical stance) is itself foundational,” in that it is a debate over the “nature of human nature itself.” What are the integral constituents of all human activity? The debate boils down to this (terms and definitions borrowed from Richard Lanham): Serious Man vs. rhetorical man (note that in the second, neither word has been capitalized in this instance).

Serious Man:
The “self” is irreducible.
Society, for humans, is a referent reality.
Physical nature, which contains society, is also referential, and (“out there”) independent of humans.
Language was invented to communicate facts about both nature and society. However, there is a third category of response: emotion.
The success of communication can be measured and monitored (key words: clarity, sincerity, faithfulness to self).

rhetorical man:
An actor, whose identity depends on the reassurance of daily reenactments.
The lowest common denominator: the social situation.
Dwells in various value structures, which change constantly, and is uncommitted to any single construction of reality, of which she/he is prone to manipulate.
An explorer of resources.
“Reality is what is accepted as reality, what is useful.”

Fish offers many instances of this "same argument": Donald McCloskey’s analysis of the economic method, which exposes the personal conviction behind that which is normally deemed scientific (fiercely objected); Thomas Kuhn’s insistence that science is motivated by persuasion rather than verification (to be truly objective would require a “neutral observational language”); J.L. Austin exposes the performative function of language; Derrida and deconstruction (inspires the quote below).

“…Rhetorical Man (now capitalized), teeming with roles, situations, strategies, interventions, but containing no master role, no situation of situations, no strategy for outflanking all strategies, no intervention in the arena of dispute that does not expand the arena of dispute, no neutral point of rationality from the vantage point of which the “merely rhetorical” can be identified and held in check.”

The ways that other critics and theorists (Terry Eagleton, Robert Gordon, Jürgen Habermas) have sought to resolve the “dangers” of rhetoric have only sufficed in manifesting the same old argument. The discovery that all knowledge is rhetorical leads them to adopt a method in order to counter, and hence liberate us from, the distinct power of rhetoric, to “use the insight of partiality,” Fish criticizes, “to build something that is less partial.”

[link to other articles by Stanley Fish: http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/kniemela/fish.htm]

February 11, 2008 at 9:08 PM

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