Rhetoric FTW!

Then and now, the measure of rhetoric’s responsibility to and involvement in public and political life has always been a question of distance. How close do we get to political discourse when it is consumed with violence? How close do we get when solutions to social injustice transcend the limits of scholarly discourse and criticism? How close do we get when the interlocutor is our neighbor, and that neighbor is in trouble? (Coogan and Ackerman, 4)


In the Novella by Joseph Conrad, The Heart of Darkness, a man by the name of Marlow is hired to search for Kurtz, a English captain lost in the African Jungle: the heart of darkness. His dying words: The Horror. The Horror. Kurtz was the standard Victorian hero: running off to savage lands with only a hunting rifle and sweet Handlebar Mustache only to become a god to what ever less-than-holy race he encountered (he was actually considered a god in the novel). What he discovered in the darkness was too much for him to handle, and it eventually claimed his life.

Why does Coogan and Ackerman remind me of Kurtz. Kurtz is to Coogan and Ackerman as the Heart of Darkness is to the public. Why is that every encounter that I have with Rhetoric talking about the public goes something like The Heart of Darkness. Rhetoricians seem to go all Victorian on us and act like were hunting lions on the African steppes. Come on man. Like the public is something that has to be colonized and controlled before it can be helped.

I have to credit where credit is due. Miller at least takes a somewhat sensible approach:


I do not mean here to dismiss rhetoric as a sham art or to reject it in favor of some other, better description of our communicative dilemmas. I mean, rather, to honor the dangers and powers of rhetoric, which the ancients well understood and which our enthusiasm about the revival of rhetoric may sometimes lead us to forget. We cannot, as Garsten says, avoid the “twin dangers” of pandering and manipulation that arise from the nature of rhetoric itself (2).[i] Some theorists have encouraged us to reconceive rhetoric as a cooperative rather than an adversarial art, Booth prominent among them. At the same time, he confesses his own failures and inabilities in attempting to practice the cooperative listening-rhetoric he preaches. (16)

In this case, sensible doen't seem to be helping anyone. I feel like there standing over a glass jar and looking down at something they don't know quite how to deal with but they feel they have to help any way. Coogan and Ackerman seem only to be able to enter that jar under the pretense of some cultural protest. In that sense, I'm starting to see why 1960 and 70s became a resurgent period for Rhetoric studies.

I'm not saying that Rhetoric can't be valuable to the public (Once we find it that is. Dewey's concept never rang so true at it does with Rhetoric's efforts to do so). I think our program is proof of that. But when we approach the public like Cicero addressed the Forum, we are playing a game of power and not a game of agency.

FTW!