Critical rhetoric as political discourse.

• Author: Murphy, John M.

Aristotle concludes his Rhetoric with the words: "I have spoken; you have listened, you have [the facts], you judge" (p. 282). It is significant, as Beiner (1983, p. 97) notes, that Aristotle ends the Rhetoric with the concept of krinate, or judgment.(1) The persuasive task of the work is to legitimate the study of rhetoric. Aristotle's rationale rests on the need for citizens to make public judgments. He forwards a "more generous appraisal" (Hariman, 1986, p. 38) of rhetoric than Plato by emphasizing its role in human affairs as a techne and a dynamis (Farrell, 1993a, p. 65) designed to invent judgments for the good of the community. Warnick (1989, p. 305) observes, "rhetoric consisted of observing the available means of persuasion and considering how they could be applied so as to achieve good for the state and its citizenry through phronesis." Phronesis, in turn, is the "practical wisdom" needed to deliberate well about the needs of the community and to call forth appropriate action. Rhetoric finds its end in phronesis and its justification as a field of study in the necessity for a group of citizens to make appropriate judgments concerning the future of their community.

Aristotle's rationale for rhetoric has cast its shadow over American rhetorical studies (at least in speech departments) since the founding of what became the Speech Communication Association in the early twentieth century. Despite significant debates over how to study public speech, whose speech to study, and what counts as public speech, the justification for the practice of rhetorical studies generally found its way back to Aristotle's founding text and the needs of democracy. Wichelns (1925; rpt. 1993, p. 2) asserted, "Oratory is intimately associated with statecraft," and proclaimed, "the conditions of democracy necessitate both the making of speeches and the study of the art" [my emphasis]. So let it be said, so let it be done.

Nor did Wichelns' immediate academic descendants waver in the true faith. Bryant (1953) and Wallace (1963) affirmed the intimate link between rhetoric, criticism, and democratic choice. Medhurst has artfully summed up the dominant perspective: "To be able to articulate a point of view, defend a proposition, attack an evil, or celebrate a set of common values was seen as one of the central ways in which the people retained their freedoms and shaped their society. Training in public address was thus understood to be preparation for citizenship in a democratic Republic" (Medhurst, 1993, p. xi; see also Wander, 1983). The humanist vocation of speech communication scholars was clear. Democracy required rhetorical critics.

The reversal of that proposition plagues contemporary descendants of Wichelns: Rhetorical critics may well require democracy. If the primary critical task in the 1970's concerned the reconstruction (and proliferation) of method in the wake of Rhetorical Criticism: A Study in Method (Black, 1965; rpt. 1978), then the pivotal issue that has emerged of late is the precarious state of the "public sphere" (Goodnight, 1982; Cox, 1990) needed for democratic decision making, and, perhaps, for rhetorical criticism. As early as 1972, Wander and Jenkins, as well as Campbell, questioned critics' taken-for-granted belief in a full and fair democracy and their academic detachment from political issues (Wander and Jenkins, 1972; Campbell, 1972). McGee's (1975; 1980; 1982) appropriation of European social theory, Goodnight's (1982; 1989) elegaic rendering of the public sphere, and Fisher's (1984) espousal of the narrative paradigm, accelerated concern over the perceived decline in public deliberation. This erosion of faith in the "possibility of public discourse itself" (Cox, 1990, p. 327), and the suspicion that the good of the state did not necessarily coincide with that of its citizenry, undermined not only traditional rhetorical criticism, but also the vocation of critic. If public deliberation does not exist, then neither can its student: the rhetorical critic.

This is Raymie E. McKerrow's position in "Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis" (1989). Following in the footsteps of Wander, McGee, Goodnight, et. al., McKerrow carries that line of argument to its ultimate conclusion and opens the door to see what might lie on the other side.(2) If we no longer have public deliberation, then what might rhetorical critics become? Critical rhetoricians. McKerrow offers his colleagues a new name and, consequently, a new "orientation" (p. 100). McKerrow seeks to revitalize his vocation in a time of corrosive doubt by using and sustaining that doubt to invent a new role for the critic.

The "telos that marks the project is one of never-ending skepticism, hence permanent criticism" (p. 96). The critic is a "specific intellectual," who seeks to reveal, in a "critique of domination," and a "critique of freedom," the "discourse of power." McKerrow, unlike his predecessors, does not anguish over the fate of democratic deliberation. He assumes that it can no longer exist in the manner articulated by Wichelns. Deliberation has become "symbolism which addresses publics" (p. 101); said symbolism is a discourse of "power/knowledge." Efforts for social change produce new relations of oppression. Critical rhetoricians take on the Sisyphean task of demystifying and recharacterizing ongoing, oppressive discursive formations. Consistent with the role he advocates, McKerrow seeks, in his arena, "transformation" of the "set of social relations" named rhetorical criticism into "critical rhetoric" (p. 103).

He asks us, then, to take a "postmodern turn" in rhetorical studies. Best and Kellner (1991, pp. 5-28) note that a postmodern era has been declared for 100 years. Critical to an understanding of its character is the ambivalence inherent in the term; as Best and Kellner (p. 29) argue, the "post" can signify "an active term of negation which attempts to move beyond the modern era and its theoretical and cultural practices." But the "post" also implies "a dependence on, a continuity with, that which it follows." McKerrow (1991a, p. 75) believes that such "tension is inevitable." But the very presence of "post" signals a desire to separate the modern from what follows. Best and Kellner (1991, p. 30) agree: "The discourses of the postmodern therefore presuppose a sense of an ending, the advent of something new, and the demand that we develop new categories, theories, and methods to explore and conceptualize this novum, this novel social and cultural situation."

The call for critical rhetoric, I suggest, can best be characterized as rhetoric's effort to chart this "novum." In that sense, the rhetoric of critical rhetoric maintains a familial relation with conservative claims of an end of history or racism and with radical celebrations of a hyperreality. In each case, the symbolic charge of the discourse rests on the assertion of a rupture between past and present and a consequent need for a new orientation. In what follows, I explore the discourse of critical rhetoric as a kind of millenial appeal (e.g., Bercovitch, 1978; Brummett, 1984) that posits a new time for rhetoric and asserts the centrality of a critical rhetoric in a postmodern condition.

I examine three key differences between rhetorical criticism and critical rhetoric that mark this new era. First, following the lead of Gaonkar (1993), I focus on McKerrow's juxtaposition of reason and rhetoric. Second, I turn to the disjunction between the text and the fragment. Finally, I explore the audience in rhetorical criticism as opposed to the subject of critical rhetoric.

In each case, critical rhetoric advocates characteristically employ "dissociation" as their key rhetorical strategy (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969, pp. 411-59). The apparent value of the first (modernist) term in each pair is undermined by the second (postmodernist) term, a movement which concludes with the disjunction between rhetorical criticism and critical rhetoric. In this essay, I explore and extend Hariman's observation (1991, p. 67) that a modernist style of argument, marked by impersonal, dissociative, analytical strategies, shapes McKerrow's essay.

Unlike McKerrow's rather easy response to Hariman's critique (1991a, pp. 75-76), I do not think that those of us who identify with the spirit of critical rhetoric (e.g., Murphy, 1992) should reify the oppositions created by dissociation. Form matters and the formal oppositions shaping this discourse merely reverse the terms, while replicating the dialectic, between authorizing and marginalizing theoretical practices (Hariman, 1986). Rather than arguing that "the advantage of a critical rhetoric lies in its reversal of the traditional terms" (McKerrow, 1991a, p. 76), we should encourage the languages of criticism and critique to inform each other so that, in a phrase lifted from the Reverend Jesse Jackson, we can move to "a higher ground." In pursuit of that goal, I argue that Bakhtin's (1984) concept of "novelization," a process in which previously unquestioned discourses come to interanimate one another, might better characterize our current situation than the claim of a postmodern condition.

REASON AND RHETORIC

McKerrow begins his presentation of critical rhetoric with a dissociation (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969, pp. 411-59). Specifically, he (1989, p. 91) employs the appearance/reality pair. Previous efforts to save rhetoric, including "Habermas's 'ideal speech situation,' Perelman's (1969) 'universal audience,' and Toulmin's 'impartial standpoint of rationality'" only appear to do so because, in reality, they "preserve for rhetoric a subordinate role in the service of reason." McKerrow establishes a series of equivalences. "Reason" is renamed "universalist approaches" which, in turn, become "the constraints of a Platonic conception" (p. 91). A new dialectical pair appears. "Critical rhetoric" emerges as the pivotal term opposing a...