The dissociation of concepts in context: an analytic template for assessing its role in actual situations.

• Author: Ritivoi, Andreea
• Position: Report

Chaim Perelman's contribution to rhetoric has been saluted as among the most important developments in modern rhetorical theory, but also criticized for various presumed short-comings. His concepts and ideas are commonly considered both very general and generous in their potential applicability, and lamented as being too grounded in the--often obscure to the contemporary American reader--examples provided by the author. No matter how skeptical or enthusiastic one is about Perelman's rhetorical theory, it is impossible to deny that it has exerted a deep influence in the field. As Alan Gross and Ray Dearin (2005) remind US,

by the middle of the 1970s, Perelman had been canonized in anthologies of contemporary rhetorical theory, textbooks, graduate theses, journal articles, and conventions papers; he appeared alongside Kenneth Burke, I.A Richards, and Richard Weaver, as a leading proponent of the so-called 'New Rhetoric,' a term that American scholars had been using for years before Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's treatise appeared in 1958. The uniqueness of Perelman's contribution to the renewal of an ancient discipline could not be denied. (p. 11)

Despite this canonization, the list of Perelman's critics includes the names of prestigious scholars such as Stephen Toulmin, Peter Goodrich, Michael Bernard-Donals and Richard R. Glejzer, and more recently, Frans van Eeemeren and his collaborators.

Such mixed reception might be in part explained by the fact that some of the key components of this theory continue to baffle the theorist who wishes to elucidate their meaning, as well as the analyst who wants to apply them saliently. The dissociation of concepts belongs to this category. In fact it might be, as James Porter (1990) has argued, one of the most complicated and confusing devices in the entire inventory proposed by Perelman and his co-author, L. Olbrechts-Tyteca. My goal in this brief presentation is to propose an analytic template for examining the use of dissociation in particular rhetorical situations. Such an analytic template, I hope to show, can advance our understanding of the role played by this technique in a given argumentative act, help us determine whether and why it was successful, and, finally, it can establish some much needed links between a technique and the broader significance of the issues as stake in that argumentative act. While I recognize the validity of David Zarefsky's (1990) complaint that the heavy reliance on case studies threatens to lead to fragmentation in the field of argumentation, my approach is based on the assumption that carefully chosen and constructed case studies offer analytical verification. Therefore, the theorist who wants to elucidate concepts and the analyst who wants to apply them need to work in tandem, and can often end up being one and the same person.

In the first case, I examine the way in which in a community of Cold War Romanian political emigres, the dissociation of the concept of nation-state in nation and state is used to advance claims of political legitimacy, and to define the identity and status of a Romanian citizen living in exile. In the second case, I analyze the way in which in the Jewish community living in postwar France the dissociation between nation and state is used to advance claims of political loyalty, and to define the identity and the status of a French citizen of Jewish origin. Based on these case studies, I develop an analytical template that insists upon the importance of situational factors in assessing the effectiveness and broader significance of dissociation, and focuses on the role played by ideology and institutional settings.

DISSOCIATION OF CONCEPTS: DEFINITION, ASSUMPTIONS, AND PROBLEMS

The dissociation of concepts, as defined by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1965), "assumes the original unity of elements comprised within a single conception and designated by a single notion" (pp. 411-12), and then challenges this unity by identifying a source of incompatibility between the elements. A typical illustration of conceptual dissociation, as defined in The New Rhetoric, is the one that yields the philosophical pair "appearance-reality." Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1965) trace the "appearance-reality" pair through the major Western doctrines, showing how it allows philosophers to advance one particular view as valid by distinguishing it from an invalid one. Thus,

for Plato, the world around us is only an appearance; only the Forms are real. For John Locke, sights and sounds are appearances, perceptions of the secondary qualities of matter; only primary qualities, such as extension, are real. For Karl Marx, the socio-economic system we see around us is an appearance, the superstructure; only the base, the dialectical struggle leading to the triumph of the proletariat, is real. In contrast, for the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who reverses this philosophical pair, it is these very appearances that are real; the so-called realities of Plato, Locke, and Marx are illusions. In all cases, it is Term 1 that is devalued, as against Term 2. (Gross, 2000, pp. 326-27)

For Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1965), the dissociation between appearance and reality is essential for the way in which we normally perceive reality. As they explain,

when a stick is party immersed in water, it seems curved when one looks at it and straight when one touches it, but in reality it cannot be both curved and straight. While appearances can be opposed to each other, reality is coherent: the effect of determining reality is to dissociate those appearances that are deceptive from those that correspond to reality. (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1965, p. 416)

The technique of conceptual dissociation does not merely separate two elements previously considered to be connected. As Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1965) point out, conceptual dissociation "brings about a more or less profound change in the conceptual data that are used as the basis of the argument" (pp. 411-12).

What are some of the problems scholars have encountered in explaining, or using, the concept of dissociation? For Brian Vickers (1990), dissociation seems to boil down to dichotomous arguments, which he deems manipulative and simplistic. For Porter (1990), dissociation raises with particular acuity the issue most foundationalist scholars have with rhetoric: how to know when dissociation is a strategy, perhaps even a form of manipulation, and when it is a genuine form of creating knowledge, in Henry Johnstone's terms, a technique or a mode of truth? Gross and Dearin (2005) have offered a productive way to approach this question, allowing us to avoid the difficult choice between a foundationalist or a relativist stance. In their view, the dissociation of concepts should be approached from the perspective of its telos. "Speaking rhetorically," Gross and Dearin (1965) believe that "the concern ... is not whether different discourses are true, but whether, primarily, their arguments have truth as their ultimate aim, their telos" (p. 95). They also point out that "this aim may even change over time" (p. 95). Therefore, to the question posed by Johnstone and reiterated by Porter, they say "there is no general answer.... There is no general logic of dissociation or, we may safely add, of any other rhetorical device: Rhetoric is by its definition situational" (p. 96). This is a conclusion Perelman himself would have wholeheartedly endorsed.

Even though they refuse to identify a general logic of dissociation, Gross and Dearin's analytic examples are consistent with Vickers' assumption that dissociation is a form of dichotomous thinking. This assumption was in fact the main point of concern in the earliest full treatment the technique received, in an article devoted entirely to it by Edward Schiappa in 1985. Taking up the notion of a philosophical pair that is at the center of dissociation, Schiappa (1985) found an essential problem in how the technique had been commonly understood. As already mentioned, the philosophical pair includes two categories, Term I and Term II, of which Term II functions as the criterion of evaluation for Term I. Thus, Term II provides reasons for which the original entity ought to be seen as divided. Against this reading, Schiappa (1985) pointed out that it assumes we can know the true, absolute meaning of a notion, an idea that has become philosophically suspect in the aftermath of Ludwig Wittgenstein's and W. H. Quine's contributions to philosophy of language. Therefore, Schiappa (1985) argued, we need a different interpretation of the dissociation of concepts, one that is not based on the assumption of an existing true or absolute meaning.

David Frank (1998) has capitalized on Schiappa's insights, which he sees as illustrating the way in which dissociation of concepts shows "how dialectical pluralism can work to address concrete problems" (p. 123). According to Frank (2004), dissociation "allows arguers to avoid the binary thinking so prevalent in 20th century argumentation" (p. 277). Frank (2004) sees dissociative reasoning as conducive to the preservation of "opposing values, refusing to allow the problem of difference to produce solutions that obliterate competing values to achieve conflict resolution" (p. 277). This intriguing understanding of the dissociation of concepts is based in a more comprehensive approach to Perelman's philosophy of rhetoric, traced by Frank (1998) to the philosopher's cultural milieu and spiritual convictions, those of a Jew living in Nazi-occupied Belgium. Drawing upon Susan Handelman's work on Judaic thought, Frank (1998) sees dissociation of concepts as the perfect illustration of Perelman's philosophy, one deeply and subtly influenced by Rabbinic hermeneutics. Thus, dissociation of concepts is "similar to the mode of analysis seen in midrashic texts" (Frank, 2004, p. 124), and...