Today’s Plan:
Katz’s “Ethic of Expediency”
I asked four questions:
- What problem does Katz believe the memo exemplifies? Duh, the answer is expediency, but what does that term mean for Katz? What other terms/ideas/forces are operating with/through expediency? What “does” science (do)? What does this tell us about ethos and power?
- How can we explain Hitler’s approach to rhetoric? Why does Katz believe it was so successful?
- What, according to Katz via McIntyre, is responsible for the Holocaust? (see 262 and 270)
Closely read Katz’s final two pages. What does he suggest we can do to undo the power of efficiency?
Let’s talk about your answers.
Responses to Carlin
Let me take a shot at grouping these responses.
Responses that Appreciate Carlin’s Analysis
I truly believe in what you were saying. America has gotten too sensitive for its own good. There is no reason that people should be scared of life or truth.
That was very beautifully explained and made me wonder about other euphemisms that I had either heard or used myself. It made you realize that we are changing how negative things are approached and the rape victim being called an “unwilling sperm donor” really made me think.
That you. Cripple now almost sounds more human than any other term. George it seems to me the powers at be use their rhetoric to change the language to get the majority to think how they would like them to think. Bran washing using language to dehumanize.
Thank you. You finally said what everyone was thinking but never said.
Responses that Criticize Carlin’s Analysis
Do you feel that the transformation in language is in any way beneficial? I feel that some words being changed, like “retard” to something like mentally handicapped, is a positive thing.
See Saussure. Language has a power unmatched. That is to say, renaming something imbues it with new meaning. On the one had, the conditions don’t change, but the language is a much more powerful force than you see.
You bring up some interesting points, but ultimately language still comes down to a decision that must be made by the subject themselves. Words are effective no matter what. It is not for an outsider to decide.
I would say that times are constantly changing. Although we are getting more “social justice” equality, it is nice to include everyone to make them not be seen as outsiders. We are becoming more equal.
I would tell him that change is inevitable!! And tell him just because he’s old doesn’t mean he needs to hold old ideas and mindsets.
Carlin! I thought you died! Is it amazing how you can find so many different “not forward” phrases. It makes me really want to think of more. The most offensive one you talked about was the rape victims.
Some people think it(?) is funny. Some don’t. I don’t.
You’re an insensitive dick.
Responses that both Appreciate and Criticize Carlin’s Analysis
I agree with most of what he is saying. I disagree with the comments on the deaf community. People who are deaf don’t get offended when you call them deaf. I think he is going a bit overboard.
Your viewpoint is valid, just a little overrated. I understand how the softening of wording could be ultimately dangerous in the long run, however in some cases it might not be as big of a deal as you think.
He mentions that this “soft language” was created by well off white people, yet would he not be included in that group? He did have a few well-proposed ideas but he didn’t care about the people he was insulting, and wasn’t a part of those groups so couldn’t possibly know their struggle well enough to make fun of it.
Though I agree with some of the things he’s said, like how we shouldn’t bullshit, some words just make people feel better. Though there still are things the invention of new terms has helped, like going from shell shock to PTSD.
I certainly understand wanting to turn away from these new fancy terms and call things what they are. But for the most part, none of these terms are hurting people. I agree that we need to turn away from the youth-centered mindset, however most changes improve our language.
A few points to raise:
- A Word Game
- Ontology vs. Phenomenology [Objectivity vs. Subjectivity]
- Ontology vs. Ethics
Katz’s “Ethics of Expediency”
The Holocaust is primarily responsible for renewing Western academic interest in rhetoric. How does a tyrant convince one of the most intellectually sophisticated countries on Earth to help him–or at the least allow him–to scapegoat and eradicate an entire race of people?
The best answer to this question lies in Kenneth Burke’s essay “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s Battle.” What always blows me away about Burke’s essay is the publication date: 1939, before we “knew” of the extent of the Holocaust. Burke had been warning of Hitler’s power and persuasiveness since the early 1930’s and was one of the most important American thinkers of the early 20th century.
Burke’s analysis (in short): Hitler was able to create a scapegoat, the Jew. This process of scapegoating might fall under what Molly calls “objectivity”–the Jew becomes less a human than a devil, a monster, an abstraction of evil. Burke:
Once Hitler has thus essentialized his enemy, all “proof” henceforth is automatic. If you point out the enormous amount of evidence to show that the Jewish worker is at odds with [Hitler’s description of] the “international Jew stock exchange capitalist,” Hitler replies with one hundred percent regularity: That is one more indication of the cunning with which the “Jewish plot” is being engineered. (RoHB 167)
Hitler’s ability to decimate public confidence in existing political institutions:
So you had this Babel of voices; and, by the method of associative mergers, using ideas as imagery, it became tied up, in the Hitler rhetoric, with “Babylon,” Vienna as the city of poverty, prostitution, immorality, coalitions, half-measures, incest, democracy (i.e., majority rule leading to “lack of personal responsibility”), death, internationalism, seduction, and anything else of thumbs-down sort the associative enterprise cared to add on this side of the balance. (172)
What was needed then was a strong voice, an authoritative figure, who could drain the swamp. Err. Who could silence the babble, get things done, and restore Germany’s economic, military, and cultural power.
Restoration of national/spiritual dignity (fueled by our inborn desire for unity):
A people in collapse, suffering under economic frustration and the defeat of nationalistic aspirations […] have little other than some ‘spiritual’ basis to which they could refer their nationalistic dignity. Hence, the categorical dignity of superior race was a perfect recipe for the situation. It was ‘spiritual’ in so far as it was ‘above’ crude economic interests, but it was ‘materialized’ at the psychologically right spot in that the enemy was something you could see (the Jew). Furthermore, you had the desire for unity […]. The yearning for unity is so great that people are always willing to meet you halfway if you will give it to them by fiat, by flat statement, regardless of the facts. Hence, Hitler consistently refused to consider internal political conflict on the basis of conflicting interests.
Rather, Burke explains, Hitler argued that political differences were the result of conflict between good people, the right people, “us” and bad people, the wrong people, “them”–all political conflict was, at its root, the fault of them bad people] Back to Burke:
People so dislike the idea of internal division that, where there is a real internal division, their dislike can easily be turned against the man or group who would so much as name it, let alone proposing to act on it. (176)
Burke and Katz offer us two different, but interrelated, ways of thinking about the authoritarian, fascist roots of genocide. One is rooted in human frailty–our need for a metaphysical/ontological foundation. A rock upon which we may lean. We have to KNOW our place in the world. This is a desire for certainty. One of my favorite writers, Victor Vitanza, writes about the desire for certainty, for our need for a home in the world:
My position is […] that we are not at home in our world/whirl of language. Any and every attempt to assume that we are has or will have created for human beings dangerous situations (Negation, Subjectivity, and the History of Rhetoric, 157).
Dangerous situations because we are willing to negate–first symbolically, then physically, then lethally–the “other,” the differend, the one who is different, that threatens our sense of home (obviously, home here does not mean the physical building in which we live, it means the sense of self and world in which we dwell). Vitanza draws on Burke to explain the dangers of “negative dialectic,” of defining ourselves, articulating our identity, in relation to others:
The negative–or negative dialectic–is a kind of pharmakon, and in overdoses, it is extremely dangerous. (E.g., a little girl is a little man without a penis! Or a Aryan is not a Jew! And hence, they do not or should not–because in error–exist). [Note the many ways we could update his examples with rhetoric surrounding transgender, MAGAers, immigrants, democrats, anti-vaxxers, etc. Social media has intensified how negation shapes identification]. The warning label–beware of overdoses–is not enough; for we, as KB says, are rotten with perfection. We would No. That is, say No to females, Jews, gypsies, queers, hermaphrodites, all others. By saying No, we would purchase our identity. Know ourselves. By purifying the world, we would exclude that which, in our different opinions, threatens our identity. (12-13)
Katz offers us a different strain of thought. He would, most likely, agree with Burke and Vitanza–that our metaphysical and ontological insecurities lead us to craft metanarratives that put others at risk. But the “ethic of expediency” isn’t an essay on the daners of our weakness so much as an essay on the dangers of our strength. We can do. If we can do, we will do.
To understand why this is a misreading of Aristotle, you have to understand Aristotle’s theory of virtue as happiness. For Aristotle, what ultimately makes us happy and virtuous, the highest thing for which we can aim in life, is productivity. We are at our happiest when we are making something. When we are contributing to our family, our community, our world. We are at our core makers and doers. In order to be happy, we have to be making something that we feel is useful and meaningful. It is unlikely, then, that you can be happy working at a Subway. Sure, you are assembling something. You are even assembling something that people like. But did you make the sandwich or merely assemble it? Who is the true sandwich artist? I digress. You get the point–for Aristotle, happiness is in making meaningful things.
The perversion of this ethic is expediency. When we care only about making things as efficiently as possible. When the only way we value the process is by how efficiently we make the product.
Then let’s look at this memo from 1973.
Efficiency, Katz argues, is liberating precisely because it turns extraordinary human problems into math problems. It eliminates the gray areas of mortality–which resonate in the same frequency as our metaphysical and ontological insecurities (our weaknesses). It lets us bask in the illusion of absolute strength. Math is so clean and powerful and cold and calculating. Pure unadulterated expediency.
But–to return to my last question above–what can we do about it? Katz offers a strategy based around “humanitarian concern” (272), and perhaps we have touched upon this in our discussion today. I’ll give Kenneth Burke the last word. He closes “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s Battle” with a kind of manifesto against authoritarianism. His words still seem relevant in the early 21st century:
As for the basic Nazi trick: the “curative” unification by a fictitious devil-function, gradually made convincing by the sloganizing repetitiousness of standard advertising technique–the opposition must be as unwearying in the attack upon it. It may well be that people, in their human frailty, require an enemy as well as a goal. Very well: Hitlerism itself has provided us with such an enemy–and the clear example of its operation is guarantee that we have, in Hitler, and all he stand for, no purely fictitious devil-function made to look like a menace by rhetorical blandishments, but a reality who ominousness is clarified by the record of its conduct to date. […] But above all, I believe, we must make it apparent that Hitler appeals by relying upon a bastardization of fundamentally religious patterns of thought. In this, if properly presented, there is no slight to religion. There is nothing in religion proper that requires a fascist state. There is much in religion, when misused, that does lead to a fascist state. […] Our job, then, our anti-Hitler Battle, is to find all available ways of making the Hitlerite distortions of religion apparent, in order that politicians of his kind in America are unable to perform a similar swindle. The desire for unity is genuine and admirable. The desire for national unity, in the present state of the world, is genuine and admirable. But this unity, if attained on a deceptive basis, by emotional trickeries that shift our criticism from the accurate locus of our trouble, is no unity at all. (188)
Homework
Make sure you read the comments on your Project 1 carefully–as I might have made alterations to your project proposal (either asking you to read more or post/create more or to compose/emphasize a particular deliverable).
For Friday, Feb 16th, read the Burke essay “Terministic Screens.”
