Chapter 10
Rhetoric and Postmodernity
Chapter Overview
Chapter Ten begins by defining postmodernism’s key features and then linking those features to rhetorical theory. The chapter uses Afrocentric rhetoric, media, and protest rhetoric to illustrate how postmodern thought affirms rhetoric’s value. It then uses Kenneth Burke to bridge modernism to postmodernism. Mikhail Bakhtin, Wayne Booth, and Michel Foucault will be used to show how discourse can spark new approaches to theorizing everyday language. The chapter then turns to queer theory as a vivid application of postmodernism’s social construction thesis to gender and sexual identity before closing by discussing Jacques Derrida’s contribution to postmodern rhetorical theory. Feminist theories are explored, as rhetoricians such as Sally Miller Gearhart and Sonja Foss interrogate traditionally male sources of knowledge and power.
Review Questions
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Postmodern rhetoric represents a placement of value on the adaptative quality of rhetoric to understanding continuously changing audiences and uplifting previously muted voices. Specifically, postmodern rhetoric highlights the role of language in identity formation and social change. Afrocentric rhetoric demonstrates how structure and power, as well as culture, shape public argument and everyday rhetorical practices. Studying rhetoric within media offers fresh insights on cultural communication. Postmodern protest rhetoric also demonstrates the power of language to enact social change.
Booth writes that it is impossible for an author of fiction to become completely invisible. He believes that the “author’s voice is always present, regardless of how thoroughly it is disguised.” Booth believed that authors pretend not to be present in the voices of their characters, but that though an author may disguise themselves in many ways, they may never disappear. Booth’s ideas about the rhetoric of fiction connect with Bakhtin and Burke’s belief that a rhetor cannot adopt a neutral stance, as well as with the concepts of motives within the symbolic arena.
Lévi-Strauss, realizing the similarities between mythologies around the world, wrote about the patterns and structures that characterized myths. The structure, or “grammar,” of myths and narratives revealed the structure of the human thought and experience. Lévi-Strauss sought to reveal the structure of human thought by investigating the narrative patterns humans created and valued. His form of structuralism also held that these patterns reflected a cosmic order. Properties of myth were above ordinary linguistic expression. Much of Lyotard’s work and postmodernism was a reaction against Lévi-Strauss’ structuralism.
Foucault uses the term “archaeology of knowledge” to describe the type of investigative work he did to reveal epistemes from a past culture or era. His type of archaeology looked at “archives,” by which he meant the set of rules that determined the types of discourse that could take place in a culture. His archaeology of knowledge was less an intellectual history than an investigation of the possibilities of human thought, given the restraints on discourse in a community. Foucault later used the term “genealogy” to convey the way in which epistemes influenced the thinking of the following time period.
The feminist critique of the Western rhetorical tradition is that it has systematically excluded women from both the discipline and the public sphere. As rhetoric has been traditionally male dominated it has left little room for women to express their experiences and be equal contributors in democratic societies. Scholars such as Gearhart find the masculine model of rhetoric violent and argue for a new “womanized” model, while others such as Julia Wood take a more investigative approach and utilize the rhetorical tradition to highlight the construction of gender. Overall, the feminist critique of the Western rhetorical tradition recognized the patriarchal nature of the discipline and encouraged the discipline’s investigation with a new consciousness.
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Essay Questions
- Draw on two theorists discussed in Chapter Ten to describe how the notion of rhetoric can be expanded to encompass human communication activities beyond the traditional speech or written argument. What kinds of activities has each sought to account for as rhetorical? What kinds of theoretical mechanisms has each developed to assist readers in understanding a realm of human rhetorical activity broader than the speech?
- Michel Foucault and the feminist rhetoricians discussed in Chapter Ten perceive that rhetorical practices are crucial to either the existence, preservation, or criticism of culture. Summarize the two views of the relationship between rhetoric or discourse and culture represented by Foucault and the feminist critics. Which view do you find more persuasive?
Weblinks
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Article on rhetorical strategies in African rhetoric
Article on rhetoric in social media marketing
Article on Kenneth Burke’s pentad
Bitesize Philosophy YouTube video on Foucault’s Panopticon
Recommended Readings
Want to learn more? Check out these bonus readings!
On Kenneth Burke
Don Abbott. “Marxist Influences on the Rhetorical Theory of Kenneth Burke.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 4 (1974): 217–233.
Barbara Biesecker. Addressing Postmodernity: Kenneth Burke, Rhetoric and a Theory of Social Change. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1997.
Kenneth Burke and The Twenty-First Century. Ed. Bernard Brock. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999.
Critical Responses to Kenneth Burke. Ed. William H. Ruckert. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1969.
Ross Wolin. The Rhetorical Imagination of Kenneth Burke. Columbia, SC: The University of South Carolina Press, 2001.
By Kenneth Burke
Counter-Statement. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1931.
Language as Symbolic Action. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1937.
A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1945.
A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1950.
The Rhetoric of Religion. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1961.
Language as Symbolic Action. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1966.
The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.
On Mikhail Bakhtin
Michael Holquist. Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World. London: Routledge, 1990.
By Bakhtin
(V. N. Voloshinov, pseud.) Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Trans. L. Matejka and I. R. Titunik. New York: Seminar Press, 1973.
Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Ed. and Trans. Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
By Wayne Booth
The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1961.
Now Don’t Try to Reason With Me. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1970.
Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1974.
The Company We Keep. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988. The Vocation of a Teacher. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
On Jacques Derrida and Deconstruction
James A. Aune. “Rhetoric After Deconstruction.” Rhetoric and Philosophy. Ed. Richard A. Cherwitz. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1990: 253–273.
Jonathan Culler. On Deconstruction. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982.
Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida. Ed. John D. Caputo. New York: Fordham University Press, 1997.
Christopher Norris. Derrida. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.
By Jacques Derrida
Speech and Phenomena. (1967). Trans. David Allison. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973.
Of Grammatology. (1967) Trans. Gayatri Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.
Writing and Difference. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Positions.
Trans. and ed. Alan Bass. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
On Michel Foucault
James W. Bernauer. Michel Foucault’s Force of Flight: Toward an Ethics of Thought. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1990.
The Cambridge Companion to Foucault. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
The Foucault Effect. Ed. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Gary Gutting. Michel Foucault’s Archaeology of Scientific Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Charles Lemert and Garth Gillan. Michel Foucault: Social Theory as Transgression. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
C. G. Prado, Starting with Foucault: An Introduction to Genealogy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995).
Karlis Racevskis. Michel Foucault and the Subversion of Intellect. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983.
David R. Shumway. Michel Foucault. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1989.
By Michel Foucault
Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Pantheon, 1965.
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. (1966) New York: Pantheon, 1970.
The Archaeology of Knowledge. Trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Random House, 1972.
The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. Trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Random House, 1973.
Discipline and Punish. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vantage Books, 1979.
Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault. Ed. Donald F. Bouchard. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977.
On Feminism and Rhetoric
Karlyn Campbell. “Hearing Women’s Voices.” Communication Education 40:1 (January 1991): 33–48.
Karlyn Campbell. Man Cannot Speak for Her: A Critical Study of Early Feminist Rhetoric. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989.
Constructing and Reconstructing Gender: The Links Among Communication, Language, and Gender. Ed. Linda A. M. Perry, Lynn H. Turner, and Helen M. Sterk. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992.
Elizabeth A. Fay. Eminent Rhetoric: Language, Gender, and Cultural Tropes. Westport, CT: Bergen & Garvey, 1994.
Sonja Foss, Rhetorical Criticism (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 1989), 151–152.
Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin. “Beyond Persuasion: A Proposal for an Invitational Rhetoric.” Communication Monographs 62:1 (March 1995): 2–18.
Carol Gilligan. In a Different Voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.
Sally Miller Gearhart. “The Womanization of Rhetoric.” Women’s Studies International Quarterly 2 (1979): 195–201.
Diane Helene Miller, “The Future of Feminist Rhetorical Criticism,” in Listening to Their Voices: The Rhetorical Activities of Historical Women, ed. M. M. Wertheimer (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1997), 359–380, pp. 361–362.
Deborah Tannen. Gender and Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
K. S. Vonnegut. “Listening for Women’s Voices.” Communication Education 41:1 (January 1992): 26– 39.
Women, Knowledge and Reality: Explorations in Feminist Philosophy. Ed. Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsall. New York: Routledge, 1989.
Women’s Voices in our Time: Statements by American Leaders. Ed. Victoria L. DeFrancisco, Victoria L. and Marvin Jensen. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1994. Julia T. Wood. Gendered Lives. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1994.