Arguing violence: the theory and politics of truth.

• Author: Ayotte, Kevin J.
• Position: Book Review

Certainty leads us to attack evil; being less sure we would but resist it. The difference between attack and resistance is the difference between violence and argument, the thread on which our lives dangle.

--Alien Wheelis, cited in Brummett, 1976, pp. 39-40.

In the wake of September 11, 2001, and the ensuing global "war on terrorism," we might expect students of public argument to return to the study of American foreign policy rhetoric with the fervor witnessed during the Cold War. As Gordon Mitchell (2002) recently observed, scholars from within and without communication departments have already begun the vital task of exploring security studies and international relations through the lens of argumentation. At the same time, scholars, myself included, drawn to the intellectual questions echoing in the cadence of war drums, would be mistaken to suppose that the only brutalities worth our attention are those so obviously framed by the flames of a terrorist bomb or the flash of a military rifle. In the hope of encouraging rhetorical inquiry relevant to the broad range of human aggression in the contemporary world, this essay considers four recent books concerned with diverse expressions of violence from equally varied theoretical perspectives. The texts reviewed herein address discursive violence in the form of hate speech, literary representations of rape, modern geopolitical violence, and the metaphysical underpinnings of violence as an abstract phenomenon. The decision to examine such eclectic treatments of violence reflects both the intellectual value of each study in its own right as well as the theoretical significance of the contrasting epistemological assumptions driving each book's understanding of truth in the practice of public argumentation.

Although one would be hard-pressed to demonstrate that any of these volumes constitute an entirely novel approach to violence studies, as there are varying amounts of extant literature related to each particular subject, the specific focus of each work offers a more or less unique insight on the intersection between violence and public argument. Since the 1980s, a multitude of books and articles have been published about hate speech, its social consequences, and the efficacy of assorted legal responses to it. Studies of social movement rhetoric also abound, with a few explorations of the connection between public discourse and hate movements (e.g., Levin & McDevitt, 1993; Whillock & Slayden, 1995). Alexander Tsesis' book, Destructive Messages, provides a useful contribution to this topic because of its extensive treatment of hate speech as a mode of argumentation fundamentally required for the constitution of hate-based social movements. Sabine Sielke's Reading Rape is also not alone among works analyzing the social, political, and legal implications of discourses representing sexual violence (e.g., Ehrlich, 2001; Matoesian, 1993; Wolfthal, 2000). What is especially intriguing about Sielke's text, however, is her exclusive attention to literary representations of rape in American fiction; while analyses of rape discourse in the legal sphere are plentiful, Sielke reminds rhetorical scholars that public argumentation draws its persuasive resources from a diverse array of cultural artifacts. Both Tsesis and Sielke also remind us of the need for continued attention to the ubiquity of interpersonal violence in a world where public and media attention often seems focused on the more spectacular forms of violence discussed in terms of color-coded threat levels. Jonathan Schell's The Unconquerable World does address this sort of geopolitical violence, and his text illustrates the possibility of bridging the gap between scholarly studies of argumentation and publicly accessible discussions of international politics. More importantly, Schell covers several historical examples of arguments for nonviolence that might encourage the consideration of alternatives to the militarism evinced in the current "war on terrorism." Of the four books discussed in this review essay, Cult of the Kill, by Gregory Desilet, is the least overtly concerned with specific forms of physical violence. Although other works, such as Jacques Derrida's (1967/1978) essay "Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas" and David Campbell and Michael Dillon's (1993) The Political Subject of Violence, explore metaphysical notions underlying violent practices, Desilet makes explicit the symbiotic relationship between metaphysical epistemologies of objective truth and the human capacity for physical violence. We will return to the role of epistemology and argumentation in each author's study at the end of this essay. First, however, we will consider each work on its own merits.

HATE SPEECH AND VIOLENCE

Tsesis' book, Destructive Messages, explores the relationship between hate speech and the emergence of virulent social movements intent on persecuting ethnic minorities. According to Tsesis, hate speech plays an "instrumental role ... in the development of a social psyche willing to tolerate massive inhumane treatment of outgroups" (pp. 26-27). Consciously restricting his analysis to ethnicity, he coins the term "misethnicity" to describe the "institutionalized hatred of ethnic groups" in a terminological form parallel to "misogyny" (p. 2). Although the focus upon ethnicity as a target for hate may limit the utility of this work for some, Tsesis offers a wealth of historical examples of misethnic bias that are highly applicable to situations faced today by numerous racial and ethnic minorities in the United States and around the world.

Destructive Messages begins with the discursive genealogy of anti-Semitism in Germany from the Middle Ages to the rise of the Nazi party early in the 20th century. Ranging from Martin Luther's later writings to the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Tsesis traces the dissemination of anti-Semitic discourses among German intellectuals, the general public, and eventually to a young Adolph Hitler (pp. 11-25). Tsesis then analyzes the impact of these discourses with applications of the social psychology of hate that resonate with well-established theories of rhetoric. "Hate speech," observes Tsesis, "is integral to maintaining hierarchies by helping to legitimize degrading stereotypes" (p. 96). Kenneth Burke and Richard Weaver both described the persuasive power of "ultimate" terms to shape political debates according to hierarchical principles (Burke, 1950; Weaver, 1953). Although Tsesis does not conduct his analysis from within the theoretical precepts of public argument, the parallels will be useful to anyone interested in the rhetorical practices of hate movements. Other lines of anti-Semitic argument identified by Tsesis, such as "[Paul de] Lagarde's dehumanizing twist to anti-Semitism" comparing Jews to parasites and bacteria might gain significant explication from consideration of Burke's corpus. According to Tsesis, such dehumanizing language "was essential to the Nazis" (p. 24). In a similar vein, Burke argued that the "scientific ideals of an 'impersonal' terminology can contribute" to events such as the Holocaust because of the dehumanizing influence of such discourse (Burke, 1950, p. 32). Given the book's focus on discourses of hate, Tsesis' reliance on social psychology to explain scapegoating (pp. 85-98) might also benefit substantially from Burke's understanding of the way in which the "dialectic of the scapegoat" unifies the social Self in opposition to some despised Other (Burke, 1969, pp. 406-8).

One of the strengths of Destructive Messages is its exploration of a range of misethnic discourses, including those used to justify the enslavement of Africans and the genocidal "relocation" of Native...