Today’s Plan:
Corder
Before we get started, I want you to think about the last time times you really disagreed with someone on anything significant. Any level of significance. Not like “where should we eat dinner.” But something at which something was at stake. Something where you were qualified as upset, irritated, or angry. Something that concerned who you are (not what you can do), right or wrong. Morality.
I’ve set up a space in Canvas for you to freewrite about it. Your freewrite can address any of the following questions. Then there is a second question.
- How long did it take you to think of something?
- Are you friends with the person? Relatives? Or are they outside your normal circle?
- Did the disagreement happen face-to-face? Online?
- Looking back, would you change your position? If you talked about the disagreement again, do you think they might change theirs?
- When was the last time you really believed something and then changed your mind and believed something else?
Corder Summaries
In groups I’d like you to discuss the following questions:
- Group One: [sections 1-3]: What does Corder mean by the idea that we make narratives? Why do said narratives complicate traditional notions of argument and rhetoric?
- Group Two: [sections 4-6]: How can we describe Rogerian method? Why is Corder skeptical that such a method can be useful to rhetoric?
- Group Three: [section 6-7]: Looking at section 7, would your frame Corder as an optimist or pessimist? What do “we” have to learn (and who are the “we” of this section’s final paragraphs)?
- Group Four: [Section 8]:What do we make of section 8? Why is this story here? What does it exemplify or reinforce?
- Group Five: [Section 9]: What does it mean to be “perpetually opening and closing” (29)? How can such a position help us be better? How does it tie to the other advice offered in this section?
Jim Corder, “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love” as the Grounds for a Rhetoric Other than Persuasion
I think somewhere in the end of last class I announced that Corder’s essay is one of my favorite essays ever. It is. It had an incredible impact on my career. At this point I cannot even remember when in graduate school I read it for the first time. But just about everything I’ve written since–and especially anything having to do with the purpose, study, or teaching of rhetoric–is haunted by it. My dissertation focused on the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas, but my reading of Levinas (and other theorists such as Alphonso Lingis, Julia Kristeva, and Adriana Cavarero) is likely overdetermined by my investment in the questions Corder raises in this essay. I say questions because I think in many ways it raises more questions than it answers. Corder’s explication of narratives, which I read as a neutralizing of “ideology,” is meant to deconstruct traditional notions of argument–the idea that argument is about an emotionless passing of information between rational, open, and willing participants.
In order to better understand what questions it raises, and how it deconstructs traditional argument, I want to establish three important elements of rhetoric.
First, unlike Platonic philosophy and the modern Enlightenment it helps buttress, rhetoric doesn’t think of argument or language as purely rational. Terms are not neutral conveyors of meaning. I want to mention Kenneth Burke’s essay on “Terministic Screens,” particularly, Burke’s idea that terms often capture “attitudes.” Terms can think for us, though this thinking isn’t necessarily in the conscious mind, but in the subconscious one. Words carry history and associations. If you aren’t “pro-life” then you must be “pro-death.” To attend to rhetoric is to bring language’s subconscious elements to the surface, to call attention to the ways in which language thinks for us, affects us, even when we might not be aware of it. That is, rhetoric disrupts our normal communicative economy (information) by asking questions about exchange rates (affect).
Second, again recalling Burke, language does more than simply convey information. Language acts. Language is symbolic action. As Burke writes in Permanence and Change, “words are fists.” Or, at least, they can be. They can strike us. They can disarm us. But they can do more than that. The point to remember here is that language is never simply transmitting knowledge (logos). Language always hits a target–again, it is affective, or pathetic. There is no utterance that does not touch upon our emotions. Philosophy, in the tradition of Plato, has long defined itself as a discipline that filters emotion out. Emotion is noise that gets in the way of the Truth (logos). Rhetoric thinks emotion (pathos) otherwise. We experience the world in moods (Heidegger calls them), whether conscious (as emotion) or subconscious (as affect, or feelings that register and shape our consciousness).
Third, rhetoric approaches all language as political. Language unfolds in a network of relations–a world in a process of dividing itself between “us” and “them.” Worlds of competing narratives, frames, ideologies, cultures, moralities. Words are fists, and, as the theorists Francois Lyotard reminds us, “to speak is to fight.” Every utterance traces itself through those narratives. Every utterance can be read across whether the speaker is one of us or one of them. Every utterance is a strike against someone. All those hits pile up.
There is no utterance that does not hit upon another and, at the very least, make a demand of her time and attention. Such demands are taxing, and part of any rhetoric dedicated to the political (in either the broader sense of the social I have traced here or even its more common everyday sense of civic deliberation and government) has to account for the difficulty we face just trying to pay attention. In the Internet age, it has to count doubly–taking into the account the ever increasing rate at which difference is thrown at us. Filter bubbles might limit our actual contact with difference–but we know it is there. Right there. Ready to comment or critique or challenge or destroy us. It lingers, threatening our rational ownership of the world with its irrational, crazy, impossible narratives. So different than ours. So dangerous.
This difficulty, this sense of danger and dread, is amplified by our innate allergy to alterity, to difference. This, I believe, is the incredibly important conclusion articulated by Corder–Corder realizes that our desire for similitude, certainty, and safety cannot be pushed aside in the name of “objectivity” or “rationality.” Victor Vitanza, in his attempt to fuse ancient sophistry with contemporary philosophy (particularly Nietzsche and Derrida), writes:
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).
Why dangerous? Because we are so quick to silence or kill anything that threatens our “home,” our narrative, our fragile collective identity that tells us who we are, how the world should work, and what is the purpose of our life and struggle. Another narrative, a different face, an “other” puts all those homes in a whirl. The desire to end the whirl, to find ourselves standing on solid, unquestionable ground, explains for me why people will often ignore research and evidence that contradicts an ideological narrative. It explains why pizza owners in Indiana won’t serve LGBTQ weddings, and why Americans will donate nearly a million dollar to said owners in support. In the social sciences, such a tendency is termed “confirmation bias.” To anticipate my conclusion, I want to suggest that addressing confirmation bias requires more than addressing means of interpretation. It requires we craft a subject with the emotional capacity requisite to develop “a will to interpret otherwise.”
And this, for me, marks off the province of 21st century rhetoric and the scope of Corder’s questions. We are aware of all these things: language’s ability to subconsciously strike at any notion of difference or otherness, and our human–all too human–desire for Perfection. Simplicity. Unity. Certainty. Truth. These terms are not innocent. We must learn to hear them. In the age of digital cacophony, rhetoric is the discipline that cultivates civic subjects willing to listen. To attend to difference. To eschew the safe and the simple for something more messy, complicated, and–ultimately–ethical.
Corder arms us with a better recognition of how and why arguments get heated. Because arguments aren’t something people have. Arguments are what we are. I stand here as an argument for how a human should be. My being is my argument for itself. My comfort with myself, as a being, is rooted in being comfortable with myself. I might rely on external elements to support the righteous of my being. The Bible. The Constitution. Plato. Nietzsche. Plath. Seinfeld. Simpsons. Whatever. But, ultimately, I would argue that no matter the depth of our faith in the righteousness of such external elements we are haunted–as Vitanza puts it–by a (sub)conscious knowledge that such elements are not, in the words of Derrida, “assured.” And when someone approaches who doesn’t fit into the shape of the external–their square won’t fit in my circular hole–they produce an agitation at the core of my being. Their very existence is a challenge to my fundamental ontology. The are “other.” Of course, Corder doesn’t use this kind of language–but this is how I understand his argument that we are arguments. To understand that our natural inclinations are to divide–in its ugliest forms–to hate the difference that causes the contours of our identity to emerge. We see our own frailties and uncertainties only when confronted by an other who thinks or speaks or acts otherwise. That’s what Corder means when he frames argument as emergence. And he dreams of the possibility of cultivating a rhetoric that works against that natural inclination–that aims at embrace. That begins with “love.”
His question, as I understand it, is to ask how we can better train people to repress the urge to slay the other for the fact of her otherness. His answer is to provide “time.” One has to wonder if the acceleration of the digital–the way it spends up communication and thought– has contributed to the toxic political environment in which we now dwell. How can we slow down? These are the questions I attribute to Corder. These are the questions that my own scholarship has attempted to answer. I don’t think I’ve done a great job.
But scholarship isn’t always about solving a problem. Often it is about exploring a problem, recognizing it. More often, it is simply about getting others to see your problem, to pull them to it. To give your problem gravity. Bruno Latour argues something is real only in so much that it impacts others–that we can trace connections and effects. Scholarship, then, can be seen as the attempt to collect and assemble more actants in your problem’s network.
This semester, then, has been my attempt to recruit you to my cause–even if temporarily. To the question of how, or if, but certainly why, we need to learn to practice listening as I have worked to describe it. Listening, not in terms of waiting to speak, waiting to persuade, respond, counter-argument. Not in the Platonic/Aristotelian tradition of agonism and dialectic: we aren’t necessarily listening to change the other. Rather listening in terms of what Corder prioritizes–as taking the time to reflect inwardly before lashing outwardly. Learning to listen with a willingness to change ourselves.
In short, we must learn to hear our own desire for perfection, simplicity, unity, certainty, truth. And we must educate ourselves such that we don’t allow these desires to dominate the way we interact with others. Rhetoric is particularly suited to such a task, since its historical mission has been to conceptualize and predict the ways in which different audiences might interpret a particular message.
I am not an Idealist here. Conceptualizing rhetoric as listening isn’t a utopian proposal. It is not a means to ending the interminable wrangle of the marketplace. This does not mean we live in a world without argument or debate. This doesn’t mean we cannot criticize others. But it does mean that we must take the time to listen to other positions, to resist the immediate impulse to attack and tear down, to try to identify possible starting places for cooperation. There will be times when there are none. There will be times when our opponents steadfastly refuse to extend us an ear. We will be tempted to stop listening.
I will not pretend that I offer a solution for how to “fix” these impasses. But I will say, quite frankly, that I worry for the future of our government, our fragile democracy, when I see a generation of politicians, and Americans, who seem so disinclined to attend to other opinions. Other narratives. Other possibilities. It is our task, as rhetoricians, to open this problem, to broadcast it, to insist upon better media, better politicians, better schools, that acknowledge the necessity of listening, of encountering difference, rather than obfuscating, synthesizing, silencing, or ignoring it.
My dedication to thinking rhetoric as listening, and to think of listening in terms of ethics stems from my firm belief in the failure of the Enlightenment ideal (particularly the one introduced to us by Kant): the commitment that knowledge, and the gradual progression of knowledge, is sufficient to solve our human (and, of course, non-human) problems. I do not believe this to be so. For it does not address the most obvious question: how do we persuade someone to listen to knowledge? How do we cultivate a citizen, a self, willing to listen, to consider, to change? Those are not rhetorical questions, but rather the questions that drive my dedication to rhetoric.
One other thought: an anecdote from the last time I taught Corder that still troubles me (tied to Corder’s idea that “any statement carries its history with it” (17).
Homework
For homework I’d like you to write an thorough summary of an academic, peer-reviewed research article that can contribute to your final paper. Use the framework from last class as a guide for your write up:
- Pass One–see the framework–Begin by reading the abstract, introduction, and conclusion. Look at any tables, diagrams, and/or illustrations. Have an overall sense of the argument.
- In or near the conclusion, look for where the writer(s) advocate(s) for us to do something differently; what does she perceive as the impact of this research?
- Can you summarize the paper in a sentence or two in your own words?
- Pass Two–
- Highlight and annotate as you go. Look for keywords that indicate findings. Try to identify what problem the article hopes to address
- Especially when working with research, make note of the methodology. Was it a survey? An experiment? Was it qualitative research (textual analysis), or more quantitative (measurement)? When working with scholarship, pay attention to the theorists or scholars the author uses to support her argument.
- Pass Three–Can I answer all of the following questions?:
- What are the central arguments in the article?
- How did they collect their evidence?
- What does their evidence say?
- Why is the article important?
- What recommendations do the authors make?
- After reading this research, what recommendations can I make?
- How does the article contribute to my field of study, my present research?
