Analyzing and judging the manifest rationality of Gloria Steinem's "Supremacy Crimes".

AuthorKeith, Arrington Phillip

Introduction

The horrific mass shooting on February 14 2018, by another young, white male (I will not name him) at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, may likely increase the relevance of Gloria Steinem's Ms. article on the alleged "Supremacy Crimes" committed at Columbine High School on April 20 1999. On that earlier date, two young, white males orchestrated a complex, multi-faceted slaughter of a dozen students, one teacher, while injuring scores of others, before committing suicide. This carnage subsequently ignited a wide-ranging debate in American media over gun-control laws, bullying, high school cliques, anti-depressant abuse, and violent music and video-games--issues that seem predictably to reappear in the fractious public discourse after each mass shooting.

Co-founder and co-editor of Ms. magazine, and one of America's major feminist authors of the last half-century, Steinem commanded a preemptive ethos to argue many of the issues the Columbine massacre raised in 1999 (1999-2000, 45-47), and her article prompted four letters to the editor after its initial publication. (1) Since then, and many mass shootings later, "Supremacy Crimes" has started to appear as a selected reading in some college textbooks to which students are asked to write responses, with some posted on the Internet. The relevance of Steinem's article has enlarged in the wake of more mass gun killings and the wide-spread media attention given to domestic and serial violence against American women, children, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (questioning) (LGBTQ), and other minority populations--so much so her article has been cited in several recent research studies on male violence (Madfis 2014, 67-86; Baker and Stein 2016, 87-109; Sevier and Ashcraft 2009, 533-557). Steinem even commented on her article during a 2014 segment of The Queen Latifah Show, exactly one year before the racially motivated, mass gun murder in Charleston, South Carolina, pointing out its continuing importance to understanding mass killings since Columbine.

The continuing relevance and visibility of "Supremacy Crimes" might surprise one Ms. letter writer who feared Steinem's argument would be ignored, if not forgotten, in the polemical aftermath of Columbine (Keith 1999-2000, 4). That, thankfully, has not happened. Still, so far as I know, few media reports call these mass killings "Supremacy Crimes" or fully engage the case Steinem makes for who these mass killers are and why they kill. Only very recently, following a female's suicidal attack on YouTube's Headquarters on April 4 2018, have media commentators even begun to mention what Steinem noticed almost two decades ago: that these public displays of violence are overwhelmingly performed by men, if not always white men.

However significant "Supremacy Crimes" has now become, it still seems fair to ask how effectively Steinem argued her case. This question should not be seen as more feminist "backlash." Steinem herself admits that the "backlash" against Ms. was there from the start, so that "[a]nything feminist" was treated as an "object of ridicule," "an oddity that couldn't last" (Steinem 2012), and eventually forced, Susan Faludi observes, the very magazine Steinem co-founded to change, partly because of some young women's "resistance" to the term "feminism" itself (Backlash 1991, 109-110). Rather, my question suggests the need for a more careful examination of Steinem's argument precisely because it has survived this backlash. To that end, I seek to show how Steinem makes her case, and how well she makes it, guided by Ralph H. Johnson's theory of manifestly rational arguments, and his tentative criteria to judge such arguments.

As an argumentation theorist, Johnson has proposed that written arguments (his focus) should be practically defined by their purpose: to persuade others through manifestly rational means, thereby tacitly or explicitly "forswearing]" such other means as "force, flattery, trickery, and so forth" (2000, 150)--means that Wayne C. Booth likewise insists the best rhetoric, oral or written, must avoid (1974, 137; 2004, x, 11). Johnson's manifestly rational argument must not only be but appear rational on its face (2000, 164-167). This appearance of rationality depends on what Johnson calls an "illative core" of conclusions and premises (2000, 164). However, "illative tier" seems a more consistent label given Johnson's other, more controversial requirement (Finocchiaro 2013, 46): that arguments have a "dialectical tier" wherein an arguer defends her conclusions and premises against objections and alternate views (Johnson 2000, 167-168). Johnson offers and defends an admittedly incomplete, carefully qualified list of "criteria" for evaluating both tiers (2000, 180-216). Illative tiers are to be judged according to whether the arguer's conclusions are supported by sufficient, reasonably relevant, acceptable, and generally truthful premises; dialectical tiers, by whether the arguer shows an awareness of and readiness to address persuasively any relevant opposition, resistance, and objections to either conclusions or premises. While the "meta-argumentation" of Johnson's theory qua theory has drawn criticism (Tindale 2002, 299-309; Govier 1998; Boger 2005, 224-228; Finocchiaro 2013, 46-48, 50-64), and while there are certainly other alternative theories that could apply to Steinem's case, (2) my goal here is more specific: to consider the extent to which Johnson's theory can be usefully adopted to analyze and judge how rationally persuasive one feminist author's essay is.

Why Johnson's manifest rationality?

I was attracted to Johnson's theory because, while not denying "the reality of oral argumentation," his "dominant concern remains with the written [argumentative] text," argument's "most stable form" and the "most suitable candidate for the practice [of argument]" 2000, 156, emphasis added). This emphasis on written arguments has not escaped criticisms from those more interested in the wider process of oral argumentation (Tindale 2002, 90-92), but it does complement my own past efforts in teaching college students how to read, analyze, and evaluate written arguments as well as how to compose effective arguments themselves.

Johnson's view of the purpose of written arguments seems sensible and practical, as does his effort to recognize the function and structure of two, mutually reinforcing tiers in accomplishing that purpose. Keenly appreciative of Kenneth Burke's dramatic dance of motivational ratios (1945), Mikhail Bakhtin's studies of the dialogical heteroglossia within discourse and language (1981), and Booth's ideal of a "listening" rhetoric (2004, 46-54, 89-106, 127-128), I welcome Johnson's strongly dialectical conception of argumentation. "The arguer," Johnson insists, "has an obligation to take into account the positions of others who have also taken a rational position because to fail to do so would not be rational"--an "obligation" derived from such classical exemplars as Plato's and Aristotle's "dialectical review[s]" in their various works (2000, 151-152, 161). Johnson thereby calls argumentation the "dialectical process par excellence" wherein the "intervention by the Other[s' positions]" alters and improves the argument, making it a "more rational product" (2000, 161). While no arguer can be expected to imagine and meet all possible objections, Johnson's must still acknowledge the "mixture of opinion, a background of experience, information, and knowledge," "views of adversaries]," and "typically well-known objections," as these are the "dialectical realities" that impinge on the quality of any manifestly rational argument (2000, 206-209). Given these "realities," Johnson offers criteria for judging how well an arguer addresses standard objections, alternative positions, and the consequences and implications of the arguer's adherence to her own premises and conclusions.

Yet, Johnson's dialectical conception has led some critics to say his "dialectical tier" is not necessary for all arguments, written or no, while others claim this tier is so symmetrical with its illative counterpart that the latter can be interpreted in terms of the former, thus removing any theoretical requirement to distinguish them addressed (Tindale 2002, 96-98; Govier 1998; Finocchiarao 2013, 69-70). Some further insist that no arguer can possibly foresee or respond to every objection or alternate view, simply because the process of argumentation takes place over time and may never reach closure Johnson's criteria for judging dialectical tiers has also been criticized because they offer no help in determining which or how many objections and alternative views are to be Beyond that, if all manifestly rational arguments must include a dialectical tier, this requirement suggests all rational arguments must originate out of controversy (Finocchiarao 2013, 52-53). (3) This insistence would certainly exaggerate the importance of controversy to generate any argument's rational end, and thus the absolute necessity for a dialectical tier in every argument.

Another concern critics of rhetoric may have is Johnson's effort to justify his distinction between a manifestly rational and a rhetorically rational text. Johnson maintains that a rhetor can omit or ignore a dialectical tier if the omission enhances the rhetor's illative tier, but the writer of a manifestly rational argument cannot afford this omission (2000, 163). Rhetors, Johnson concedes, can appeal to ethos and pathos as much as logos--Johnson's explicit concern--as parts of the "determining outcomes in argumentative space" (2000, 269). His theory, however, focuses on the qualities of the illative tier within the dialectical "obligations" he thinks all manifestly rational persuasion presumes.

Johnson's distinction may be the result of centuries of negative bias against rhetoric among philosophers and...

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