This morning I had an interesting discussion with one of my colleagues who is a rhetorician and who just presented a paper at a local conference on what rhetoric should be. Like many in the world of literature department, he is dissatisfied with the way in which rhetoric programs these days seem so focused on “high-brow theory”, and have abdicated their traditional focus on pedagogy. That is, when he reads rhetoric journals and attends rhetoric conferences, the papers are more about figures such as Bakhtin, Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari, or Burke than about the actual practice of rhetoric. As such, he has adopted an “anti-theory” stance and has begun to focus his research on actual rhetorical practices such as you might find among ministers, teachers, and public speakers. From his point of view, rhetoric programs need to return to their roots and focus once again on figures such as Quintillian, Seneca, and Cicero.
I, of course, am of the view that one’s practice can only be as good as ones theory and that there is no such thing as a practice that doesn’t already embody a theory– no matter how underdeveloped –of some sort. Nonetheless, I sympathize with a number of the points that he is making. As I see it, the problem with rhetoricians is that they talk with rhetoricians, the problem with philosophers is that they talk to philosophers, and the problem with literature people is that they talk to literature people. What I have in mind here is the thesis that the rise of the modern academy, beginning in the 19th century, has been a disaster for practice in the humanities insofar as it has cut us off from engagement with the broader social-world within which our practice takes on meaning and purpose. It seems to me that this renunciation of theory is symptomatic of a crisis within our respective fields, borne of a sense that what we do does not matter. And in many respects, those of us who sense that what we do is an intellectual game more centered around building our vitae than anything of real consequence in the world are right. We perpetually get caught up in games, striving to formulate the most radical thesis, the most provocative reading, struggling for position in the academic world, without these debates and theoretical productions making much of a difference. At least this seems to be the case in the American academy.
I think that traces of this historical outcome could already be sensed with the founding of the first academy by Plato. Why did Plato found the academy? I’m only speculating here, but my theory is that the academy was a way of preserving the pursuit of philosophy, the cultivation of the soul and preparation for death that he speaks of in so many dialogues, while protecting philosophers from the fate of Socrates. I use the term “philosopher” loosely here to refer to anyone engaged in research, whether in the sciences, mathematics, the social sciences, rhetoric, or the humanities. Socrates, in his speech and practice, was a politically potent figure. The last thing we want is a Socrates on every street corner. Consequently, the best solution to this problem is to lock the philosophers up, even give them a comfortable living, so they’ll talk to one another and engage in their pursuits, without disrupting the social and political world outside the walls of the academy. I jest, but not much.
Rhetoricians sometimes like to claim that we need to return to the rhetorical tradition preceding the Enlightenment. This, for instance, is one of Sharon Crowley’s theses in a book that I highly recommend. However, in my view Crowley fails to examine the Enlightenment thinkers in context or to analyze the relationship between these thinkers and the great Greek and Roman rhetoricians. Figures such as Cicero and Seneca were almost deified by thinkers like Hume and Diderot because of their great commitment to civic life and engagement with the public sphere. Indeed, Hume was extremely euridite where ancient philosophy was concerned, having encyclopedic familiarity with the Greek and Roman rhetoricians, and the Enlightenment thinkers modelled their own conception of philosophy on the Romans. Their philosophy was a very public practice, premised on social engagement, combatting superstition, and devotion to civic life. Each of the texts written by the Enlightenment thinkers was a rhetorical grenade designed to draw lines and open a space where new social formations might be possible.
The anxiety that constantly haunts me is that our grenades no longer have any targets save in sterile intellectual debates that only impact others in the academy. We have lost any sort of engagement with an outside to the walls of the academy, and therefore experience a sort of melancholy where our work is meaningless. I take it that the rejection of theory is symptomatic of this discontent and sense that more direct engagement is necessary. In the mean time, figures such as Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, Georg Lakoff, Frank Luntz, Frijtof Capra, etc., become the real motors of social engagement. The importance of agora such as the blogs is precisely that they function to break down these walls, enabling new discourses and forums that are no longer so myopically focused on academic debates. It is for this reason as well that intellectuals such as Zizek publish articles in newspapers. What other forms of engagement are possible that would break up this impotence?
February 27, 2007 at 7:42 pm
Levi, – this has been a periodic theme of yours in many previous posts. It is understandable, but not very productive, in your case invariably leading to some sort of victimization. Either it is the stupidity of the American religious right or the superficiality of people parading their Deleuzian terms without having studied his texts. Or it is the existential melancholy that you speak of.
This is probably why you find blogging so refreshing: You get instant gratification through the appreciation by your readers (and we are many who continue to be grateful to you and learn from you in ways that are both intellectually and practically useful – always remember that, Levi!)
In fact the most striking feature of your recent post about the virtual Agora is the frequent use of the first personal plural WE. That pronoun doesn’t often appear in the blogosphere. It’s practically absent. Blogging seems generally to be a narcissistic enterprise, seldom producing any other responses than “I feel that, too”.
The German philosopher Axel Honneth (who now has Habermas’ job in Frankfurt) published his The Struggle for Recognition. The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. in 1995.
It comes in three parts. Part I is about Hegel and how he abandoned his original idea of building a social theory on the basis of an inter-subjectivist account of the “struggle for recognition, and instead chose the spiritual.
Part II is about the “struggle for recognition” with “empirical backing” from social psychology, and in Part III, Honneth moves to explore the use of ideas of recognition in social theory and how this concept has been and could be used to shed light on how norms of behaviour are changed through moral struggle.
The three phases of the struggle for recognition are: (i) the demand for love, confirming the reliability of one’s basic senses and needs and creating the basis for self-confidence, (ii) the demand for rights, through which one learns to recognize others as independent human beings with rights like oneself, creating the basis for self-respect, and (iii) the demand for recognition as a unique person, the basis for self-esteem and a complex and tolerant social life.
In many ways, blogging seems to revolve around the same needs for recognition, now in an electronic form without the clutter of physical contact.
Returning to Deleuze: He practised philosophy when teaching at Vincennes with open class discussion for hours on end late in the afternoon with people coming in from the streets to join the students.
Isn’t that what WE are doing, too?
February 27, 2007 at 8:16 pm
Orla, I always find your remarks in connection to these thoughts, well, bizarre. There seems to be something in these observations that hits something very real for you. I am not at all enunciating a position of victimization nor do I see myself as a victim. Rather, I’m articulating the framework within which my own writing and thought takes on meaning, and the manner in which I see philosophy as relating to the broader social world in which we live. I’m surprised that you mention melancholy, when in fact the primary affect here is one of joy. With regard to my rhetorician friend, for instance, he experiences a sense of powerlessness and impotence with regard to the practice of rhetoric. My whole point is that this is not the case at all, that there is power and engagement. At any rate, when you write:
Returning to Deleuze: He practised philosophy when teaching at Vincennes with open class discussion for hours on end late in the afternoon with people coming in from the streets to join the students.
Isn’t that what WE are doing, too?
I’m surprised that you miss that this is exactly my point. Whatever the case may be, I really wish you’d curb your reactive responses to these sorts of posts and cease intervening if your only aim is to curb what I’m unfolding on my own and which I’ll continue to do regardless of whether you approve of it or feel that it’s appropriate. I really don’t see what responses such as this accomplish or promote.
February 27, 2007 at 9:45 pm
Dear Levi – NO, no! You misread me. I was just reacting to your statement in your last post about academe as a prison where you write,
The anxiety that constantly haunts me is that our grenades no longer have any targets save in sterile intellectual debates that only impact others in the academy. We have lost any sort of engagement with an outside to the walls of the academy, and therefore experience a sort of melancholy where our work is meaningless.
Then I suggested that this might sound as unhealthy victimization, coupled with your other (pet-peeves, as you call them) and protestations that the current political atmosphere in the US is stifling. Which I also understand.
Mentioning Axel Honneth’s theories of the need for personal recognition as a driving force behind much blogging was my remark (attempt at explanation?) to your recent post What Will We Have Been? (which I enjoyed very much).
Your lines, Will the trace of our speech have been preserved? Will we have done anything at all? Will we have accomplished anything at all? – I took as (a bit) well, melancholic. But I also share your enthusiasm of our blogging Salon.
I tried to cheer you up (or belabour the point?) by mentioning Deleuze’s practice.
Man, you are my favorite blogger and have been since I discovered you the first time.
Boy, I really must work on my practical rhetorics(!) so I won’t be that misunderstood in the future.
February 27, 2007 at 10:04 pm
I think that in many cases, the opposite of what you describe in this post is true. Perhaps in particular circles, scholarship is just insider baseball (I think that might explain this post). However, to use philosophy as just one example, over the last few decades, philosophers have become more and more involved in extra-philosophical pursuits: participating in science, including applied science, participating in policy debates, etc. The same is, of course, true of rhetoric departments at most schools. In philosophy departments, this is probably in part a result of the pragmatism that comes along with the debt most English-speaking philosophy owes to positivism, but I think it may also be a result of the way the academy has evolved over the last century or two (a process which has, in fact, been quite different from what you describe here). You can see the beginnings of a complaint that the academy has become all about practical knowledge (designed so that students will become productive workers) in Hegel, and as colleges and universities became glorified job training universities in the 20th, the focus of scholarship was inevitably altered. I think in some ways, “theory” was a reaction to this trend, but because it has been so localized (in a few segments of a few departments). I wonder, sometimes, whether theory people tend to talk largely amongst themselves in part to continue to avoid the larger trend of increasing practicalization (I know that’s not a word, but oh well) in scholarship.
The fact that the vast majority of scholars at institutions of higher education in this country, including in most of the humanities (certainly in most philosophy departments!), are hostile to theory can then be seen as a reaction both to the insular nature of theory communities and to the radical difference in scholarly focus. In a way, theory people are really old school.
February 27, 2007 at 11:12 pm
Chris, interesting observations about practicalization. As a result, the schools become institutions for the reproduction of the conditions of production. I think I was trying to get at something similar to what you say with regard to the insular nature of theory. I’m not, however, prepared to give up on theory, so I wonder what is to be done.
February 27, 2007 at 11:57 pm
I’m having a very scattered day, so my comment will be at an extreme tangent – sorry about this…
My question with things like this tends to be: what changes when we view ourselves as being in the frame? If we see our context as one in which a particular, sometimes insular and disconnected approach to theory is put forward in salient respects, but if we also take seriously our own critique of such approaches, as an equally salient dimension of that context: what does it say about the context, and about potentials for intervention, when we try to think ourselves in the same terms as we think the objects of our criticism?
Perhaps it suggests that we are already in a context in which the walls have been significantly breached: the academy suffered in many respects from the transformations of the 1970s and 1980s – and one response (there were of course others) was to recoil into the hyperabstract. Among the things this massive involuntary transition created, though, was an academic diaspora – a set of people with intellectual interests that, at one point, might have been channelled into the university, who were driven into the world – still often, perhaps, dreaming of an intellectual community, but by dint of necessity open to the potential that such a community might need to form on a very different basis than the modernist university… So a latent community desiring intellectual discussion, but not having the sort of strong socialised loyalty to academic debate, was generated – alongside an increasingly exceptionalised academic community that may have retreated for a time into a rarified and channeled version of academic debate…
This is all quite wild and gestural sociology here – I don’t expect anyone to take me seriously. All I’m trying to suggest is that perhaps the fear of sterile intellectualism might result from casting a critical eye in one direction, without asking what informs that critical eye – what motivates the sense that something else is possible. If I were a bit more coherent, I’d try to develop this point into something more positive – but I’m having a bit of a prison-house moment myself today, so I’ll have to bow out until I can think more cohesively…
February 28, 2007 at 2:18 am
I don’t see any reason to give up theory. I do wish there was another name for it, though. The name is so abstract that we might as well call it “thing” or “stuff”
I do genuinely wish theory was more willing to integrate. For example, I think many of the social and behavioral sciences would benefit from a healthy dialog with theory, and theory would benefit from a healthy dialog with the social and behavioral sciences. For example, in my own field (cognitive psychology), there is a distinct lack of awareness of not only the fact that the science itself is part of a larger body of social processes, but that its object of study — cognition — is part of that body as well. On the other hand, many of the areas of theory that are directly relevant to cognitive psychology (say, psychoanalytic theory) suffer from methodological and, perhaps more acutely, terminological ambiguities that are inevitable when the dialog occurs at an abstract level (if I’m not mistaken, N Pepperell could say more about that from the perspective of identity and reification in Adorno’s work). If cognitive psychology and psychoanalytic theory(ies) participated in a dialog of mutual respect, in an attempt to find common and mutually beneficial grounds, cognitive psychology might be able to take into account the social processes that influence it and its object in a more efficient way, while it might also help ground psychoanalytic methods and terminology in more concrete, empirical discourse practices.
February 28, 2007 at 2:24 am
p.s. There are very real barriers to such dialogs. For the most part, cognitive psychologists see their field as aspiring to the model of science that comes from physics, which, at least in the abstract, is largely Aristotelian and positivistic. That doesn’t work well with most theory (thing; stuff). It’s not uncommon to hear cognitive psychologists (or virtually any research psychologists) dismiss Freud out of hand, for example, as being unscientific, and therefore irrelevant or even harmful. I suspect that within hard core psychoanalytic circles, be they Freudian, Lacanian, Jungian, (or Kleinian, or Eriksonian… are there still many of those around these days?) or whatever, have similar reservations about positivistic approaches to self, society, mind, etc.
February 28, 2007 at 2:38 am
Chris, I think you’re right about cross-disciplinary dialogues and I aspire to such cross-fertilizations in my own work. I think one of the central reservations among psychoanalysts towards cognitive behavioral approaches is their objectifying tendency with regard to patients. Psychoanalysis, I think, has a tremendous amount of respect for the speech of the patient and does not begin from the premise that the analyst has knowledge and the patient does not. When you evoke greater empirical grounding, my first reaction is to point out that psychoanalysis is grounded in and through the phenomena that it encounters in the clinic and that this material is its ultimate arbiter. That is, psychoanalysis begins primarily as a praxis and only secondarily becomes a theory of mind. Indeed, it is even misleading to describe it as a psychology or theory of mind, as psychoanalytic theory is a theory of the clinical setting or the relation between analyst and patient.
February 28, 2007 at 4:12 am
Let me just clarify that I’m a cognitive psychologist, not a cognitive-behavioral therapist. I’m not sure to what extent different therapeutic methods could benefit from dialog, ’cause to be honest, I don’t know a whole hell of a lot about cognitive-behavioral therapies (except that I’ve gone to a cognitive therapist, and participated as pilot subject in a study testing a behavioral method for overcoming fear of heights — it involved making me stand at the edge of the roof of a 5 story parking structure, which wasn’t fun).
Cognitive psychology is concerned with issues of mind (I use that term loosely just to refer to thought and behavior, trying to avoid the philosophical implications that come with it) more generally. I’ve always found inspiration in Freud (and I’ve defended him repeatedly against the attacks of other scientific psychologists — like here). But I’m a student of the history of psychology, and find insights in a lot of places that most scientific psychologists avoid looking. It’s probably for that reason that I feel scientific psychology would benefit from a dialog with theory. And not just psychoanalytic theory. I’m also a fan of the Frankfurt school, particularly pre-Habermas, and I think we could get a lot of insight there too.
February 28, 2007 at 4:28 am
I have a pretty eclectic background and take things from wherever I find them, including various cognitive theorists that I’ve read. In my view, clinical practice should be open-ended and theory that emerges from it should undergo continuous revision and transformation as a result of these encounters. Hopefully I didn’t give you the impression that I was demonizing your practice or orientation. What I wished to emphasize was the primacy of the patients speech and experience in the clinical setting.
February 28, 2007 at 5:20 am
larval, no, I didn’t think you were demonizing it. For all I know, it may deserve to be demonized. I was just pointing out that I’m not a therapist/practitioner. I’m a cognitive scientist who doesn’t study or use clinical methods at all.
February 28, 2007 at 12:23 pm
I know this is incidental to the post, but let me just say, as a rhetorician whose training is not in the English-based approach to the subject, and who comes from a field very much interested in Aristotle and Cicero, that there is nothing more practical, pragmatic, or more being-in-touch by returning to rhetoric’s roots. At a minimum, the different media ecologies of rhetoric’s roots and rhetoric’s present serve to make the former a rather wayward model for the latter. Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed teaching and reading the classical stuff, but I would hardly consider it a cure for what ails us.
February 28, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Ken, I’ve wondered about this as well. About a year ago I gave a paper at a rhetoric conference entitled “Kairos in the Digital Age” (kairos was the theme of the conference). I used the term “kairos” in an idiosyncratic way, denoting not simply the timely intervention on the part of the rhetor, but rather using it to denote what I referred to as a “kairotic situation”, or a meta-kairotic organization in speech situations characterizing a particular historical time. I suppose I was referring to something closer to pragmatics in the strict linguistic sense. At any rate, a good deal of the analysis revolved around the thesis that digital communications media have significantly transformed the nature of speech situations for a variety of reasons, not the least of which would be a change in the relation between rhetor and audience such that the ethos of the audience can no longer be predicted. The tools formed by the ancient rhetors presuppose a number of things about the pragmatics of speech situations, that might not hold as ture today in contemporary contexts. The question then becomes that of what new models must be forged or what it means to practice rhetoric today.
February 28, 2007 at 1:18 pm
Kairos is one of those terms that has a particularly interesting history, in that its largely overdetermined by the Aristotelian and Isocrotean interpretations of it as being, indeed, a timely intervention into an extant speech situation. I think Gorgias uses the term in some ways more akin to how you are describing your paper, in that he also talks of kairos as a manufacturing of a sense of timeliness, which thus produces the conditions rather than responds to them, but of course you’re absolutely right: the rhythms of those conditions for Gorgias through Cicero are rather fundamentally different than what we experience today. Which is partly why I lean on Derrida and Stiegler so heavily in order to talk about the contemporary media scene/ecology: each places such a heavy emphasis on the specificity of different media and the differences in their attendant sense of time.