"Yes we can": rhizomic rhetorical agency in hyper-modern campaign ecologies.

• Author: Kephart, John M., III
• Position: Report

"YES WE CAN'T: RHIZOMIC RHETORICAL AGENCY IN HYPER-MODERN CAMPAIGN ECOLOGIES

On March 31, 2009, President Barack Obama gave an address on what would have been the 82nd birthday of Cesar Chavez, reminding Americans of the labor leader's dedication to fair treatment, fair wages, and to bettering the lives of all workers. In that address, President Obama made reference to the rallying cry established by Chavez, "!Si, se puede!"--which translates as "Yes, We Can!"--saying that it was "more than a slogan, it was an expression of hope." The President concluded by noting that Chavez "taught us that a single voice could change our country, and that together, we could make America a stronger, more just, and more prosperous nation" (Obama, 2009). The phrase "Si se puede" has special resonance for President Obama as "Yes We Can" was a central trope in his bid for the presidency. (1) The choice of Chavez's slogan was likely not a coincidence. Marshall Ganz, Obama's field organizer for the campaign, worked closely with Chavez and the United Farm Workers for 16 years. Further, "Si se puede" is a phrase that has special resonance with farm workers, union workers, and Latino voters, traditionally Democratic voters whose support Obama needed to garner in order to secure his party's nomination for the presidency. His description of Chavez's activism very much mirrored his own campaign discourse of hope, optimism, and the power of individual citizens to unite in community. Throughout his campaign Obama situated himself in narratives of America's hope and recovery alongside "average voters," articulating his own story of perseverance and success with that of the American Dream, and his election as the means to salvage that dream for contemporary citizens (Hollihan, in press).

The slogan "Yes We Can" was effective in mobilizing voting audiences, as demonstrated by its viral and resounding effect, from the chants of supporters to the bumper stickers on their cars. It even spawned a Grammy award winning music video by Black Eyed Peas front-man Will.i.am. Since the election, the phrase has penetrated even further into popular culture, appearing in television commercials and radio ads looking to capitalize on the massive popular support for the nation's 44th President. But this wasn't always the case. How did a rallying cry for Chavez's United Farm Workers movement become the watchword of the Obama campaign? How did a phrase that appeared on campaign posters in field offices find its way into debate responses, car bumpers, and the address recognizing the victory of the nation's first African American President?

This essay traces the emergence and development of the "Yes We Can" slogan and details its evolution as a primary argumentative trope in the 2008 election from the early stages of the Democratic presidential primary through the general election and Obama's victory. The essay examines a portion of the discourse surrounding the New Hampshire Democratic debates, Obama's concession speech after the New Hampshire primary, and the subsequent production of Will.i.am's music video. The troping of "Yes We Can" provides a critical case study of hyper-modern campaign rhetoric, and the trajectory of argument in a postmodern campaign context. Through the appropriation and re-appropriation of campaign themes, statements, and controversies, the formal presentation of the arguments and their content converge in various ways in a struggle to delineate and control the rhetorical spaces of "true" and/or "realistic" change, the old guard of traditional politics, and the possibilities and promises of citizen activism. The interaction of multiple texts in political and popular cultures combined to create multiple meanings alternately taken up, contested, and abandoned by the candidates and their supporters. This set of texts is located for analysis because it is in them that "Yes We Can" is figured as a central element of Obama's campaign. This is not to say that New Hampshire was the first time that "Yes We Can" appeared in the campaign. Field offices had posters of "Yes We Can" on the walls, and it was chanted at some campaign events after the Iowa victory. However, the New Hampshire debate was the first time that Obama used the phrase in a significant public address, and it was after the New Hampshire concession speech that it became a widespread feature of the campaign. (2) We trace the development of "Yes We Can" by examining its presence in an assemblage of fragmented texts that were (re)appropriated to craft the rhetorical message.

We do not claim a direct cause and effect relationship between statements on the campaign trail, debate barbs, post-event spin or their manifestation in popular culture. Rather, we argue that the discourse surrounding "Yes We Can" functions rhizomically. A rhizome is a term from botany that describes "a horizontal plant stem with shoots above and roots below serving as a reproductive structure" ("Rhizome", n.d.). The term was developed by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1987) as a metaphor for knowledge that rejects top-down binary thinking and instead adopts a fragmented, non-hierarchical (or horizontal) approach to knowledge, allowing for multiple points of entry and departure in the construction of that knowledge. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) note that "the rhizome operates by variation, expansion, conquest, capture, offshoots" (p. 21). We hold that a rhizomic understanding of rhetoric is a useful lens to view postmodern argument as it provides a means to engage the development of multiple, interconnected lines of argument and the development of rhetorical tropes in the context of a hyper-mediated political campaign. Whereas a modernist approach sees a unified, rational subjectivity as the locus of rhetorical agency, a postmodern approach to argument locates rhetorical agency at the intersections of and interactions between rhetor, text, and audience.

An analysis of the development of "Yes We Can" reveals the use of performative polyphony (the bringing together of many voices to perform one message), relentless intertexuality (the incorporation of a variety of texts in the service of a rhetorical message), and discursive prolepsis (the anticipation of a response in the construction of an argument) as rhetorical strategies. These strategies enabled, constrained, and influenced the movement of "Yes We Can" throughout the 2008 election. We first review the relevant theoretical literature on political campaigns, public argument, and rhetorical agency to provide context for our essay, and to make an argument for the application of a rhizomic rhetorical perspective to postmodern media contexts. Then the paper turns to an examination of the development of the "Yes We Can" trope as an exemplar of rhizomic rhetoric. By doing so, we hope to both critically engage the rhetorical strategies of the Obama campaign and demonstrate the theoretical utility of a rhizomic model. Finally, we will offer some general conclusions on the insights such an approach can provide to the theory, analysis, and pedagogy of argument.

THE RHETORICAL CONTEXT OF POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS

Political campaigns can be viewed as a particularly complex and exhausting instance of public argument. Securing a party's nomination for president now occurs over the course of nearly two years. Candidates must wade through partisan politics at both local and national levels, slug through a grueling campaign schedule of stump speeches and primary debates, and be constantly aware of the demands and dangers of the 24-hour news cycle. The problem with contemporary views of these campaigns by talking heads and academics alike is that they treat moments in campaigns as discrete, bounded, and purely rational enterprises (Kephart, 2006; Majdik, Kephart & Goodnight, 2008). To see campaigns from such a perspective is to ignore the multiple ways in which issues are generative throughout a campaign and make their appearance in a variety of salient moments (Murphy, 1992). To focus primarily on tracking the most recent soundbites is to miss the complex development and interrelationship among campaign events. Further, such a rationalist approach diminishes the importance of emotions and the poetic forms of argument.

As George Lakoff (2008) and Drew Westen (2007) contend, political scientists and campaign managers since the drafting of the Declaration of Independence have espoused a view of politics that presumes that voters act on purely rational terms. These terms presume a rationality that "is conscious, literal, logical, universal, unemotional, disembodied, and serves self-interest" (Lakoff, 2008, p. 2). When attempting to sway voters, this view argues, candidates should rely on strict cost-benefit calculations; when exposed to facts and figures, voters will reason through the data and reach the conclusion that is most in line with their own self-interest. This approach fails to see that motivating voters emotionally is often a critical first step to getting them to engage questions of politics rationally (Lakoff, 2008; Westen, 2007). Further, such an approach relies on individual instances of argument, instead of engaging how voter perceptions and attitudes are formed through multiple emotional attachments throughout the campaign within a "marketplace of emotions" as well as a marketplace of competing ideas (Westen, 2007, p. 35).

This essay sees campaigns as dialectical contests in which candidates do more than merely exchange arguments; they engage in the "symbolic enactment of leadership" through the use of rhetorical styling to project a "presidential image" (Hinck, 1993). John Murphy (1992) emphasizes that discursive campaign events, including debates, create and contest positions and strategies through narratives that both exist within the wider context of the campaign, and tap into historical narratives and ideological struggles. Placing campaign events...