“The texts teachers and students encounter through dialogue are not merely sites for examining dominant and recovering subjugated voices of history but opportunities to evoke realistic knowledge bases about power relations and culture—to mine the rich varieties of implicature encountered in the analysis of multiple discursive and nondiscursive performances and engagements. A focus on critical localism as pedagogical practice would incorporate, compare and evaluate local and national voices. In the process, those voices identified as potentially inimical to our common democratic goals could also be interrogated. Her both student and teacher test and refine their own voices in an exciting cooperative venture. In probing similiarities and differences that make a difference, dialogue is transformed into discovery� (282).
To carry on with the conversation that seemed to be gaining some energy, I would say that I wouldn't feel comfortable going into a classroom without a syllabus on the first day. Something I've done since my second semester of teaching that might help me begin to achieve democracy in the classroom is having students deliver "ghost speeches." These are speeches that have been written and delivered by someone else. Sometimes students go to Americanrhetoric.com, per my suggestion, and sometimes they branch out. One of my Muslim students chose to give a speech by the founder of Pakistan. There were other instances where minority students chose to give speeches by people we don't typically promote in part of the canon: Atticus Finch's closing argument in "To Kill a Mockingbird," Nelson Mandela's speech upon his release from prison. I don't do much besides let the students choose their speech and hope that those in the audience listen intently. Perhaps I could do more work to help students engage in discussions that help bring about greater insight to the "multicultural" character of rhetoric.
I mention this to suggest a way to invite a more flexible way into teaching without completely eliminating the syllabus. "Winging it" would certainly not be my style.
I must say that teaching is important to me. It also seems important to the UM. When choosing my classes this term, I noticed that outstanding teachers have been recognized with a "star" and information about the kind of award the outstanding teacher received. Perhaps this recognition does not help one secure tenure, and perhaps it is only after one has achieved tenure that they can begin to think about translating the quality research into quality teaching. It is discouraging that teaching does not receive more care and concern. But, it is a fact. One thing that I continue to draw upon when things begin to get overwhelming is a quote from the chair of our department. That is, "Remember, you're a student first."
]]>Thoughts on Mirzeoff’s argument
The SUV and Superstore encourages the act of moving along—in the car, we are constantly moving, and in the Superstore, we are encouraged to get in, get the lowest prices and get out, assembling the products bought there at home. We are moving along—constantly circulating. This is an important movement for Mirzeoff. Once inside the home, we are encouraged to look but keep moving because we no longer feel safe in our homes owing to the permeability of the screen. We know something is going on over there, but we don’t know what it is for we are inclined to constantly “keep moving�
Perhaps the initial movement associated with vernacular watching can be found in the space of the SUV and Superstore. What’s important for Mirzeoff is the next step regarding how we no longer feel safe within our own homes. Rather than focus on what we see before the screen regarding the war, we turn away, because the view makes us anxious about how insecure we really are.
Warner claims that the cultural constitution of a medium is a set of political conditions of discourse. Conditions include practices and structured labor we call technology. To understand implications of print, we must always consider how it is a product of and producer of culture.
Printers products—capitalization
Printers agents—“participants in creation of West’s self-identification, producing universalizing discourses of the Enlightenment and of the democratic revolutions� (4).
For Adams, “printing’s purposes, uses, and meaning do not themselves undergo change. The press is a powerful instrument for enlightenment precisely because its nature is not contingent� (4). Warner says when viewing the nature of print as static it becomes difficult to explain how this technology creates and sustains democracy while at the same time supporting despotism. The claim is backed by the specific example of how Chinese and Uighur Turks used print for the latter purpose during the enlightenment; therefore, Warner argues that we must “assume that the purposes, uses, and meaning of print do change� (4). They change as a result of the creation of “newspapers, the rise of empiricism, capitalism, the Enlightenment, the novel, the democratic revolutions, the rise of a bureaucratic state� (5).
Other literature assessing the value of print comes to us via print historians who view print as a non-symbolic form of reality. They claim it is mere technology, an unmediated medium. The consequences of this claim include: a guarantee that there will be a single object of study; and “it allows one to trace the effects of print culture by bracketing cultural history itself� (5).
Warner says that “at the very moment historians draw their conclusions about the historical effects of printing, they bracket the political and symbolic constitution of print� (6). This approach ignores the fact that print is politically and symbolically constituted.
Those who study the “history of print� grant this technology an ontological status outside of cultural and social formations (Harold Innis, Walter Ong, McLuhan, Elizabeth Eisenstein). These studies only acknowledge “religion, science, capitalism, republicanism, and the like appear insofar as they are affected by printing, not for the way they have entered into the constitution and meaning of print in the first place� (6). Warner contests the ontological status print on logical grounds by arguing that because various forms of printing exist (ink, printing press, laser printing, zerography, etc.), this prevents us from reducing our understanding of it to a single form (7). Thus, Warner says, the history of printing cannot even define its subject properly without asking about the history of the public and other political conditions of discourse. He is interested in the historical constitution of printing, and this goes far beyond simple questions of the effects of printing that lead one to credit print forms for enlightenment. This is too simple, and it ignores relationships of power in the process.
At one time, printed objects made by hand were no different than type-set objects. Over time, however, documents with impressions made by the hand were no longer considered print objects. Warner uses this history to prove his point about how culture determines the form and status of print. “It is because publication is a political condition of utterance that we meaningfully distinguish between books impressed by types and those impressed by pens, where we do not make the same kind of distinction between those impressed by plates and those sprayed by lasers� (8).
A more serious problematic arises when scholars deem print with an ontological status outside of culture, according to Warner, for when “media and technologies receive this kind of transcendental status, their social investments and rhetorical meaning disappear from the field of analysis, only to return in mystified form, disguised as the previously latent logic of technology� (8).
“The assumption that technology is prior to culture results in a kind of retrodetermination whereby the political history of a technology is converted into the unfolding nature of that technology. Everything that has been ascribed to the agency of printing—form formal characteristics such as abstraction, uniformity, and visualization to broad social changes such as rationalization and democratization—has been retrodetermined in this way. What have historically become the characteristics of printing have been projected backward as its natural, essential logic. Meanwhile, its historical determinations have not been analyzed, for historians have learned to consider the realm of politics and culture only as the secondary field of technology’s presumed effects� (9).
After setting up his theoretical argument, Warner’s project continues with examples of analyses regarding the immanent meanings of writing and print in the culture of republican American and the imperial context of the Enlightenment.
Example of what Ron identified as “recursivity�
“Just as the white community would not have been the same community without its opposition to other groups and its constitution through writing and printing, so also written media would not have entailed the same dispositions of character-would not have had the same identity-had participation in them not entailed membership in that community� (13).
II. Paradox: individuals as subjects must serve as both the cause and effect of social structures and of history itself
a. Theory of “interpellation� - Louis Althousser- “HEY YOU!�
• Subject is culturally and linguistically determined
• “Subjectivity is the product of ideology’s power to interpellate – to place – individuals at particular sites within the field of meanings which it constitutes� (117-118)
• Subject now has the experience, the “truth�: “passive occupant of a particular position w/in a linguistic universe� (118)
• Subordination occurs
• Even the most subordinate, while becoming an object, still preserves a sense of subjectivity b/c they still “experience� the world
b. Grossberg: Too much power on language and discourse – interpellation – not enough room for individuals to act to challenge history (ideology and history hold winning hand – deny the possibility of agency)
III. Ways to respond to dilemma of agency being denied
a. Interpellation never entirely successful – no one is ever perfectly positioned.
i. Explanation
• Individual subject is always overdetermined by contradictory interpellations which construct his/her subjectivity
• The result is a fragmented subject which can act against and single instance of its own subjection
• Fragments, in a sense, become autonomous and are not a coherent whole
ii. Problem: Doesn’t explain how individuals can make history/how they can be source of historical agency
b. Solve the problematic relationship between subject and agent
i. Explanation: places agent in another ontological realm – independent and transcendent
ii. Problems:
• Ignore social construction of the sites of agency
• Emphasizes the agency of resistance; ignores that of domination
• Agency is too individualized
c. Interpellation is an incomplete account of subjectivity and identity – identity produced only when subject-positions are articulated to ideologically produced systems of meaning
i. Explanation:
• Subject is located within ideological systems of social difference
• cannot be reduced to subjectivity b/c they are determined by a number of social forces that operate differently in different situations
• ideology constructs a set of “cultural identities� which determine subject positions
ii. Cultural Studies carries (c) a bit further: paradox of subjectivity results from mistaken identification of individuals with both subjects and agents of history – history is “made behind our backs�
1. History complex set of relations
• Subjectivity: the site of experience and of the attribution of responsibility
• Agency: the active forces struggling within and over history
• Agent-hood: actors operating, whether knowingly or unknowingly, on behalf of particular agencies
2. Critics try to identify specific planes on which individuals operate in history
• Must, rather, be separated: disarticulated so they can be re-articulated.
• Without the detour: identification of relations is a reduction of possibilities – all politics is of identity and subjection
3. Need to realize the living – what people do: action. Not what they know or what they are.
4. May be irrelevant that people act from ideologically interpellated and articulated positions
5. How act is articulated historically and politically is an matter of agency and agent-hood
IV. Agency
a. Never merely a matter of individual’s power to act
b. Actual historical affectivity – actual specific forces at work in the context of a struggle – is what matters
c. Agency only can be described in its contextual enactments – never transcendent – exists in historical forces at play
d. History has “tendential forces� – create spaces in which people can experience and act – map out “long-term directions and investments� (123)
e. Forces act through agents – control destiny of society
f. Agent: group coming together at particular moment; need not have shared social identity
i. Relationship between agents and agencies NOT simple nor direct; agents have own agenda – might not be in service of a particular historical force
ii. As “players�, agents ability to play the game depends on their access to apparatuses and institutions of agency – within sites, agents do NOT need to act as subjects
V. “What does it mean to talk about a position of subordination in relations of agent-hood and agency?�
a. Some individuals and nominal groups are denied specific sites of agency
b. Subordination constructs relations to “historically effective forces�/ “positions of activity� (125)
VI. “What are the links that connect ideological subjects to agents?�
a. “Affective individuality�: subject, not of identities, but of affective states
i. Moves through terrains, power depends on its place in specific maps, location, how it is moving
ii. NOT random or subjective: it carries historical maps; course determined by social cultural and historical knowledge ~ specifics not determined
iii. Individual is both an articulated site and one of ongoing articulation w/ history
iv. Unlike subjects, the discourse is “empowering signposts� (126); not just a system of differences
v. Need to establish “not an identity so much as a place, not a subjectivity so much as an affective individuality� (126)
vi. Most important: who is acting and from where
vii. “nomadic, affective life of the individual which empowers the articulation of the individual into structures of agent-hood and agency, which enables it to move between specific identities and nominal groups� (127)
VII. No necessary correspondences between various elements – no “guarantees which subjectivities or identities form nominal groups which are then able to become historical agents� (127)
a. Affectivity depends upon access to specific apparatuses
Though we all aspire to see our names linked up with articles and books that we've published, the reality is that we may or may not be published, and/or maybe in venues that may or may not accept the ideas we promote (remember when Ron said QJS would not publish his article on "debating both sides). However, the internet is one space where re-signification is possible. He says, "A new freeing up of the flow can both let through anything at all, and also give air to critical possibilities that used to be limited or inhibited by the old mechanisms of legitimation--which are also, in their own way, word-processing mechanisms."
In chapter 5 I also get the sense that there's more flexibility for re-signification when using newer forms of technology. He says on page 60, "writing with ink is more fluid, and thus 'easier,' than on stone tablets, but less ethereal or liguid, less wavering in its characters, and also less labile, than electronic writing. Which offers, from another points of view, capacities for resistance, reproduction, circulation, multiplication, and thus survival that are ruled out for paper culture." This called to my mind the news I heard recently on Democracy Now about bloggers circulating a memo regarding Dubbyah and Tony Blair's decision to bomb the Al-jazeera television station back at the beginning of the War in Iraq. Perhaps this isn't what Derrida means by resistance, but maybe it is. I'm interested in knowing what others think. Democracy and freedom of expression and deliberation becomes an exercise one can participate in on the internet. It is also an example of people engaged in re-signifying what George Bush represents/signifies regarding spreading democracy around the world.
Additionally, I had the same feeling that Ron did about Butler's theory offering a limited possibility for resistance, at least when gender is concerned. For example, everything I know about queer theory suggests that there's only so much one can do when performing gender in ways that attempt to resignify male and female. Cross dressers will always resist the essence of femininity by wearing lipstick and high heels while at the same time reinforcing those binary oppositions of what it means to be woman or man. Jessica's example certainly suggests there is room for resistance, but the transgendered example is limited because that person remains on the margins. Doesn't really seem that the potential for shaking up gender binaries packs much punch, to be honest.
Derrida brings an excitement to the discussion, especially when one considers the amount of independent media and blogging that goes on these days. I don't keep up with it myself, but my spouse does a fine job of keeping me informed, and it seems there are pockets of resignifying and resistance going on out there every minute of every day.
As for my final thoughts, I wondered what it would feel like to flirt on the blog. I'm going to give it a try. Wink, wink!!!
OK, now let me trace this out. Intellectuals have, in general, been part of social movements and have been actors in the public in the public’s function of constituting democracy. Warner articulates that intellectuals in the public are for giving reasons, are for articulating a world that could be and that frames things for movements to strive towards. They also legitimize movements and actions in the public through their writings and even through movement members using theory and philosophy intellectuals provide. Now I do not mean to suggest that intellectuals are face-to-face with other movement participants or always on the front lines so to speak—their writings and books could be the way that the movement uses or has intellectuals involved. It is through the circulation of works of C. Wright Mills and Marcuse (for example) in the public (of students especially) that helped to constitute movements or action in the public. So let us hold that the writings of intellectuals in the public are an important feature of being a public intellectual and the role of intellectuals for movements.
Which brings me back to books or at least the “paper� currency that might be necessarily for “public intellectuals� to really exist. We talked about with Warner that his idea of publics being constituted through the circulation of discourse is rooted in an idea of published/paper texts. Given some of Derrida’s musings, paper does in some ways grant legitimacy in its own right. We have an idea that what is in a book or printed article carries more weight, is more of the “truth� than some musings on a blog or something we found on the internet. We haven’t moved away from this yet. So, given this, the power of a public intellectual is still for an intellectual to write—to have books—that are carried around by the movement/by citizens. Can we really have public intellectuals if we don’t have books? Are intellectuals important if they do not help constitute publics in some way through paper writings?
And back to Gitlin: the one striking thing about his book and his lecture was that being a public intellectual is all about being able to reason, to teach argument and reason. He indicated that it is also in writing and publishing things for general and academic audiences and that public intellectuals should be more “generalists� with theories of society at large and certainly not specialists, but at the same time he indicated that the reality is that not many academics can or will publish in the way to make them true public intellectuals. Legitimacy is constrained by the place which we publish.
In summary: 1) if we move to a fully electronic world, does the technology preclude the ability for there to be public intellectuals at all? And 2) In Gitlin’s world where intellectuals are just based in writing and teaching reason, should we be satisfied that is ONLY what public intellectuals have the power to do (all, essentially on the page or in the walls of the university?).
Funeral protest causes furor among legislators
Offended by anti-gay demonstrators during a fallen soldier's funeral, legislators want a limit on pickets.
Bob Von Sternberg, Star Tribune
Bipartisan outrage erupted Friday over an anti-gay demonstration outside a funeral in Anoka a day earlier, giving a boost to a legislative effort to control such picketing in Minnesota.
Two similar bills have been introduced in the House to prohibit such protests within 300 feet of the site of a service, survivors' homes or anywhere along the route of a funeral cortege. An identical bill is to be introduced in the Senate when the Legislature reconvenes next week, and sponsors predicted widespread bipartisan support.
In addition, Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Friday he strongly supports the legislation after seeing the protest held outside the funeral of Army Cpl. Andrew Kemple, who died Feb. 12 in Iraq. The protesters contend that God is killing American soldiers because they fight for a country that tolerates homosexuality.
"I was appalled by the behavior and message and insensitivity of the protesters," Pawlenty said. "You would hope they would use better judgment ... It's heartbreaking to see the effect on the families."
He said he supports a bill that would "give people space when they are grieving" and require demonstrators to "stay at a distance that's not disruptive."
The hourlong protest Thursday by six members of a small nondenominational church in Kansas ignited a talk show firestorm in the Twin Cities Friday, including on Pawlenty's weekly radio show. The picketing was condemned for hours by hosts and callers alike.
The bill was the brainchild of Rep. Marty Seifert, R-Marshall. It was prompted not by Thursday's protest but by adoption of a similar law Feb. 13 in South Dakota.
"These people have been showing up all over the country, and I figured these characters would be over here soon, but they beat us to the punch," said Seifert, House majority whip. "What they're doing flies in the face of Minnesota values."
The Kansas church members are followers of the Rev. Fred Phelps, who has preached a fervently anti-gay message for decades. Since the Iraq war began, his group's focus has shifted from the funerals of AIDS patients to services for soldiers killed in action.
In the past few months, volunteers calling themselves Patriot Guard Riders also have shown up at military funerals to counter the Kansans' message.
A companion House bill has been introduced by Rep. Dan Severson, R-Sauk Rapids, and a Senate version will be introduced next week by Sen. Don Betzold, DFL-Fridley.
"It's a sad commentary that we have to do something like this, and nobody's saying we're going to repeal the First Amendment," Betzold said. "But we're just saying let these people have some space."
Independently, a courier service owner from Brooklyn Park began circulating a petition Friday, demanding just such a state law. He plans to present the petitions to state officials next week. "What they're doing ain't right, but you can't take away people's right to protest," said Billy Bishop. "This law should be passed, like, today."
Similar legislation is being considered by at least 14 states. Phelps has denounced them as unconstitutional, "offspring of passion, prejudice and putrid pandering to the rabble."
But the law, if enacted, is unlikely to face a constitutional challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota because it wouldn't directly violate any protester's right to free speech, said Chuck Samuelson, the group's executive director.
"Placing restrictions of time, place or manner [of protesting], but not on the content of speech, can serve a compelling public interest," he said. "We generally don't like these things and part of me says leave [him] alone and he'll go away. But this is not a constitutional issue, it's a public policy issue."
]]>I'm not sure what this suggests about the conslusions of the Sloop article, but I found the results of the case interesting. A school district in NJ ruled that a transgendered individual would be allowed to return to substitute teaching in an elementary school. I have to wonder when the parents express concern for their children being confused by Miss McBeth whether or not they are transferring their own confusion onto their children.
]]>What repetition has as its correlate the maximum difference?
1. I was not sure if this question fit under the category of hegemony. The question is something that really interests me in that I would like to know about the (ontological) nature of change, its conditions of possibility, the formal expressions it assumes, etc. I was thinking of this question after last class when we were discussing how symbolic change happens through a specific process of iteration and repetition. It seems that in historically-linguistically different circumstances a signifiers iterability suggests the possibility for a repetition that may cause the signification as such to "slide" or glissage away from a hateful usage to a more "benevolent" one or something like that [deluca talks about this with "black" in Jamaica following Hall, Butler talks about "queer" and such things. So this seems like a key thing for rhetoricians to think through. If we agree that the structure of language as such is that iteration forces repetition w/ chance for difference, what kind of difference are we talking about? Is it just that things can mean differently? No doubt, this must be significant because for one thing to mean otherwise an entire chain of signifiers must also shift along with that one thing. ---still! Saussure says this happens only by accident, yes? if that then are we ultimately theorists of accident? surely we are not talking about self-identical subjects strategizing about how a word could change its meaning, or are we?---
2. There must be different kinds of difference, kinds we cannot imagine. I like this (derridean inspired from Brian Lain) example (iteration):
Follow this procedure to see maximum difference:
1. Look at the words below
2. Look away
3. Look at the word again
--Cellar Door--
The word has changed, why? The word has changed again. Each iteration must include within itself the maximum quantity for difference. So is it that the most precise repetition has as its correlate the maximum amount of difference? Some ways this makes sense: as difference in kind--bergson/deleuze/happy here--the word may only differ, truly differ, in its difference from itself not from another word or a thing from another thing for that matter. So this then is about potential rather than possible. There are any number of possible differences like cello door or cellar dook or cellar doors or anything, but the maximum potential for difference must be within and from the word itself, yes?
3. I guess I'm wondering how the butler stuff fits in with my thoughts about difference in kind rather than difference in type.
]]>Given that articulation/disarticulation is a process, then life cycle might fit. There would be, arguably, some evidence for the movement of the frontier and/or strength of the rearticulation/current articulation (how fragmented or contested it would be). Using Ron’s example from class, would it be fair to suggest that marriage between man/woman was strongest when there was no recognition or terminology for homosexuality? And that at this point we might be at the emerging phase of rearticulating the concept of marriage/traditional concept of marriage in decline? Perhaps gauging the strength of given concepts by forms of text or discourse and how these concepts are referred to? If we can say that articulation processes can be thought of as a life cycle, it might also be possible to think that there would be certain strategies that can be employed at different times of that life cycle for rearticulation to be more or less successful. In thinking of the war example (Matt’s use of Cloud, Greene, and DeLuca articles), would it be a matter of the peace movement making itself known or targeting specific articulation targets at given points along the way? For example, the peace movement was ineffective because they were acting at the height of the changeover (when the dominant was most defensive of the current articulation) so needed to lay other groundwork (like the other rearticulations that Ron suggested) to have effect on their specific target with military in America and combating the yellow-ribbon press. Although Laclau and Mouffe might not have intended their version of hegemony to be used as a tool for the oppressed (but do suggest rethinking?), with our discussion in class on the peace movement, we were leaning towards utility and action with this concept…hence my thinking here.
There are problems with thinking about hegemony as a life-cycle, so I am not certain that this makes sense given what we talked about in class. My concern would be:
1. How does one tell at what point of the life cycle you are at?
2. Can we really strategize with these practices? As Ron suggested, with the other issues that are connected/need to be rearticulated as well, how can we access those decisions or change some things given the material reality it is connected to?
3. Is there a level of consciousness that has to be gained about these hegemonic forces—do some act subconsciously (again, making it hard to determine life cycle or our ability to rearticulate)?
Lots of questions here, but wondering if it is a worthy place to push the process of hegemony in this way and what that might lead us to.
1) hegemony is the name of how cultural/politcal resources organize a common sense (a consenus) to support a dominant ideology (a world view that supports current asymmetries in power relationships between nominal groups). At times, as Gunn and Treat recenly pointed out in QJS, hegmony in critical rhetoric/communication often takes the place of ideology, tout court, in an effort to distance hegemony from the overly deterministic connotations of ideology as determination. And, as one might notice in Cloud, ideology and hegemony get very close to one another. However, in the hands of someone like Dana Cloud Or Todd Gitilin, this approach to hegemony, explains how the dominant ideology reproduces itself, and protects itself from being challenged. Though, to be honest, hegemony and dominant ideology become so fused in Cloud's analysis that they are nearly substitutable. ( Pedegogically, I would suggest that this substitution effect should be avoided, and as an editor for journals I demand it :.)
2) what might this mean for rhetoric. I want to answer this question by following what I take to be, following the writings of Leff, Gaonkar, Charland, the central challenge of contemporary rhetorical studies; namely the relationship between rhetoric as stratetic intervention/as cultural practice of persuasion and rhetoric as rhetoricality, a general process that describes the linguistc character of all human institutions, including, humans.
a) as stragegic intervention: the view of hegemony as s a consensus/common sense toward a dominant ideology potentially divides all cultural/politcal documents into two camps: those that support the dominant ideology (hegemonic texts) and those that do not support the dominant ideology ("counter-hegemonic" texts?). Dominant ideology, therefore stands in as something that is known or must be explained, but the strategic intervention (the text, as a philosophically loaded shorthand), is read for how it constructs the common sense, or adherence to, the dominant ideology.
From such a standpoint, it becomes necessary to describe what textual charctersitic links the text and the dominant ideology. In other words, what is important is how the text "speaks" promotes the dominant ideology. For example, Cloud's case on Oprah, the link is the "Rhetoric of Tokinism." Tokinism is a judgement about the narrative logic of the Oprah Texts she describes, She borrows the concept of tokinism from sociology, and gives it a rhetrorical character ("rhetoric of") by essentially turning Tokinism into a way to classify a host of different texts (a meta genre, if you will). So what we thought was, for example, a biography (a literary genre) is given a "rhetorical" dynamic by the way it partakes in a broader rhetorical/sociological classification, tokenism.
One important point needs to be made. In none of Clouds examples are we dealing with the traditional rhetorical text or genre (perhaps epidiectic would be the best way to describe the Oprah texts that she discusses, especially, the tribute show but, she does not use these classical rhetorical concepts). At the very least, her examples are not political examples in the sense of an effort to persuade an audience to make a judgement about a particular policy issue. They are genres associated with the terrain of popular culture. At which point, the question is what makes her project about rhetoric. My point is that her object domain should not be automatically imagined as a "rhetorical" object. For her to do so, she needs to align rhetoric with a general process that can be given a rhetorical character. The general process is hegemony and the concept that links these texts to the general process of hegemony is "a rhetoric of tokinism." a classification of fragmented multigeneric texts into a unified whole. ( a discursive articulation, to use L/M langauge)
As an aside: lots of folks deal with this slippage between the classical forms of rhetoric (epideictic,deliberative forensic) and contemporary forms of rhetoric like seriel television shows, by using the concept "cultural rhetoric" to describe the latter. According to Mailloux, "cultural rhetoric means taking on the study of the political effectivity of trope and argument in culture" (Rhetorical Power 59). (of couse, at this point, we are already beginning to move away from intentional efforts at persuasion to make a judgement in a situation, to a more subtle forms of persuasion as influence with or without worrying about specific situational moments that require judgement. In fact Mailloux fully belongs to a vision of rhetoric as general process ( where would their not be the political effecticity of trope and argument in culture, especially, after we textualize culture?) Back to Hegemony as common sense/consensus
b) as general process. In the Hegemony as consensus to dominant ideology approach, therefore, rhetoric becomes a general process to the extent that hegemony takes place accross the cultural/politcal sphere and this sphere has a linguistic character. Hegemony, almost by definition, has a rhetorial character, because it manifests itself in linguistic forms throughout a social fromation. We turn rhetoric into a general process to the extent that key concepts (like hegemony) are said to have a rhetorical character. The only limits, then, on the rhetorical, is the limits of the concept that has been re-made as rhetorical. For example, for Cloud, it is hard to know what text would not be either "hegemonic" or "counter-hegemonic" . Is it even possible, to have an ahegemonic text? Though, it should be noted, that attaching rhetoric to hegemony, does not necessarily, mean that we would talk about the general process in the radical sense the L/M suggest, For Cloud, rhetoric (in the first sense) either promotes or challenges power relationships (those relationships may not all be imagined as rhetorically constituted)
3. Some Critical implications:
a) A hegemony as consensus or common sense approach requires that you provide an account of the dominant ideology that your texts are said to be hegemonizing (that, is building consensus toward)
b)Try to minimize the easy substitutablity between hegemony and ideology. For example, in a phrase like hegemonic masculinity, do we mean a commons sense about masculinity that supports or changes a particular dominant ideology ( a world view that supports an asymmentrical relationship of power- Patriarchy) or do we mean that hegemonic masculinty is a dominant ideology about masculinity. In which case, what is the name of that dominant ideology. We should all be careful about this conceptual slippage effect. If you mean for hegemony to mean a common sense to a particular idea of x such a view is neutral to its relationship to power, unless you make specific claims about how that common sense harms or disadvantages particular groups or how that common sense gives a history to the dominant ideology. IN other words, if patriachy is the dominant ideology you are studying, how does patriachy change due to changing notions of our common sense about masculinity.
To think of hegemony as common sense, has builit into it the problem between product and process, I would suggest thinking hegemony is the process, commons sense is the product. The question is, what is the rhetorical character of that process that reveals a common sense (its product). The second step is to argue that the product (common sense) is bad or good for power relationship between folks. At which case, we may or may not need to concept ideology.
c. I we will return to ideology as a concept, but, I would encourage folks to follow Condit's lead and seperate hegemony from dominant ideology, they are two different concepts ( a future post will explain the implications and assumptions I find in Condit's approach). In fact, we have reasons to keep hegemony, but abandon ideology, dominant or otherwise (See Deluca on L@M). At the very least, we need to return to whether or not we should be thinking of ideology as a terrain as opposed to a product/thing (Protestantism). A concept like dominant ideology presupposes that ideology be imagined as a thing/product. As we will begin to explore next week, ideology can also be described as a process of interpellion, that makes subjects. so the relationship bewtween hegemony and ideology is not easily worked out without an idea of the difference between the two concepts and the relationship between the two concepts.
Let me know if any of this was helpful, seems wrong, seems to need amendment/clarity.
]]>Perhaps there really is no demand 1, or at least the rhetoric of demand 1 is not really a begining point for hegemonic articulation. That is, if demand 1 is thought of as an entirely localized and self-birthed demand. The way Laclau constructed a diagram during the talk of demand1, d2, ect orginally in horizontal relation to one another suggested that conception of d1. However, I think the kind of hegemonizing HSS calls for is a task that can only take place when an articulator is reacting not only to a local instance of injustice (as per demand 1) but is rather reacting to a richer matrix of previously stated demands and injustices. It may be the original articulation of such injustices may make it more or less easy for a hegemonic articulation to start to construct a logic of equivilence with that demand and others (ie it may easier to bring together poor native workers and underemployed immigrants if, for instance, the workers articulate their demands in terms of corporate exploitation instead of xenophobia). But it seems that the hegemonizing articulations must come after (in response to) local demands that have already been voiced.
While I'm not very familiar with the circumstances of the Kiaros document, it seems like it does come at such a momement when previous demands had already been made and the task had begun of producing both an equivalence among those demands, as well producing what Laclau and Mouffe call "a set of proposals for the positive organization of the social" (189).
What seems to be strikingly absent in HSS are examples, like Kiaros or the Palestinian Declaration of Independence perhaps, of democratic hegemonizing articulation (there are obviously much less cumbersome ways to talk about this, but when in Rome . . .) My question is, why are such examples are absent in the book? Do they not believe such articulatory practices occur as organic responses to contemporary conditions? Is the call for such a project, which they seem to assign to an entirely future status both at the end of the book as well as the 2000 introduction, a project for an intellectual vanguard? Is their claim really their post-structuralist analysis is needed to announce the conditions of possibility for such a hegemeny project, and only then can it begin? What's the status of the intellectual vanguard for radical democracy?
]]>Glad to see so many folks at the Laclau presentation. For no other reason than we should all know how to pronounce his name: it is" laclew" ; it rhymes with laflew. Over 15 years, I and everyone I know, has been mispronouncing his name.
On to other topics: Don't you find it curious that when folks turn to the rhetorical tradition(in his case direct references to Cicero) they often do so with an eye toward the figurative (Stylistic) at, what seems to be the expense of other canons of rhetoric? This is, partly, a typical post-structuralist move when it comes to recovering the rhetorical tradtion. But, a stylistic approach to rhetoric should not be thought as both necessary and sufficient to turn one into a post-structuralist. The added trick, and this is where I would want to ask my question, concerns the translation of that stylistic device into a means to discuss the rhetoricity of a given concept (in his case, the move from an antagonism to a hegemonic frontier). In classical rhetorical language, rhetoric as a cultural practice, is situated talk. In laclau's langague it is mostly associated with the demand (what he calls an antagonism) to change the current situation. Classically, we focus on this demand to assess whether or not the demand was successful or not in transforming the addressee. We often do so to recover the notion of agency built into the act of making a demand. But in Laclau's hand, the rhetorical charater of the demand is less important than the rhetoricity associated with pulling together mulitiple demands into a populist reason against the current configuation of the social. I guess the question is: what, then, of the rhetoric of demand 1? Is it best understood as an antagonism, something that is only interesting rhetorically for what it tells us about the possiblitiy of generating a hegemonic frontier that pulls together a host of antagonisms? But, if so, then the anatogonism itself and its rhetorical character would only be important to the extent that it gathers others together, that is, the way it speaks to and offers itself to others or its outside? Well, that would have been my question: not sure how Laclau would answer, or if he would care much about the question. But, it is a question we should put on the table. Simply put: can any one text be the focus of understanding the concept of hegemony?
cheers,
Ron