ENGL 6166: Rhetorical Theory » March 4th: Knoblauch, Ch. 3 and Constitutive Rhetoric

March 4th: Knoblauch, Ch. 3 and Constitutive Rhetoric

Plan for the Day

  • Glen McClish’s “The Instrumental and Constitutive Rhetoric…”
  • Knoblauch’s Ch. 3 “Ontological Rhetoric”
  • White Supremacy and White Nationalism
    • The Rhetoric of Fear
    • American Cultural Dis-ease
    • The Late Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Some Definitions

  • constitutive rhetoric: “constituting character, community, and culture in language” (White x).
  • synecdoche: a part is made to represent the whole.
    • Whoa! Cool threads Fonzie.
  • metonymy: a figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated.
    • They need to get their act together on Capitol Hill.*
    • I gave you my heart.
  • kairos: an opportune moment; a perfect time for something.
    • The kairos of the two meeting allowed love at first sight.

*This works best when referring to normal Congressional operations and not January 6th…

Glen McClish’s “The Instrumental and Constitutive Rhetoric…”

  • p. 35: “…transformed both King and the movement from a relatively regionalized action into a national and international cause.”
  • p. 36: “Douglass’s ‘Introduction’…failed to produce constitutive force in its time not only because of the overall indifference of whites (even among the relative moderates) but also because of the skepticism with which African Americans approached it.”
  • p. 37: “…the rhetoric of conservative self-help—the popular late-nineteenth-century strain of African American thought that emphasized a restrictive sense of individual advancement…”
  • p. 42: “it is reasonable to assume that the pamphlet would have been placed in the hands of visitors generally predisposed to at least consider its central arguments.”
  • pp. 43-44: “King wrote most directly to white moderates who supported integration in principle (particularly the ‘gradual’ variety)…”
  • p. 45: King questions religion’s role in the struggle.
    • But that doesn’t mean he questions religion, right?
  • p. 46: “Douglass’s critique…is designed to shame the white audience he wishes ultimately to recruit to his side.”
  • p. 47: Douglass notes the backlash
  • p. 49: The masculine figure in Douglass’s rhetoric.
  • p. 54: “The unit is as exhaustive in its evidence of systemic American racism as it is emotionally exhausting to read.”
  • p. 56: King’s ontological stance: “King can conclude… that “All segregation statues [sic] are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality.”
  • pp. 56-57:  “In addition to exploiting the available means of persuasion in the effort to convince white moderates to support their cause…these rhetors employ overtly logical appeals to demonstrate to their white readers that African Americans are careful reasoners, a point that in 1893 and 1963 may not have been assumed even by many of their sympathetic white readers, who would generally expect them to produce emotional arguments.”
  • pp. 69-70: rhetorical “efforts to realize constitutive force—and to conjure a progressive or even evolutionary collective consciousness—may depend upon the extent to which the spirit of the times aligns with such ways of conceptualizing agency, activism, group identity, and citizenship.”
  • p. 70: “…activist rhetors who battle against strong ideological countercurrents within their counter-publics may find the constitutive potential of their rhetoric unlikely to emerge as a significant positive influence.”

But what does that last sentence support in regards to kairos? What about the neutrality of time?

One thing I’m trying to do is draw a parallel between the constitutive rhetoric of Douglass and King and Knoblauch’s position on ontological rhetoric. What are some similar features? Consider truth, justice, inalienable rights, etc.

By the way, Glen McClish and the American Society for the History of Rhetoric had a Frederick Douglas Day on 14 Feb 2024.

MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963)

In AMDM 1575 “Engaging with American Democracy,” King’s “Letter” is required, and we discuss the White Clergymen’s prior editorials. I have notes on this that might be worth covering.

Ch. 3: Ontological Rhetoric

  • p. 51: Ontological rhetoric deals with the nature of being and privileges the view that “language derives its power to signify from its relationship to an intrinsically and purposefully ordered, that is, teleological, exteriority.”
    • In an earlier article on this topic, Knoblauch explains, “Philosophically, the ontological argument presumes an absolute distinction between the concept of ‘language’ and the concept of ‘reality,’ the second prior to the first and denoting an intrinsically coherent “world” (that is, metaphysical order) to which language ‘makes reference’ so as to enable human communication….” “In this view, language use is largely irrelevant to the substance of knowledge although crucial for its transmission.” (p. 128–College English)
  • Consider the expression “it is what it is…”

Plato

  • p. 49: “…the reality named by language is intrinsically coherent independent of verbal mediation.”
  • p. 49: “The Republic repeatedly distinguishes between Being (the Ideal) and Becoming (the Actual)…”
    • “The world of Being is a metaphysical plane (“above nature”)…after the Greek eidos.”
    • “Becoming is a physical plane, the familiar world of the senses, characterized by appearance rather than reality, change rather than permanence, decay rather than eternal perfection, shadows rather than things in themselves, and opinion or illusion rather than knowledge.”
  • p. 50: “…the painting of an object, let’s say a table, constitutes an imitation at two removes from the plane of ideal forms. Since the gods first conceived the idea of Table, it follows that the carpenter who makes an actual table resembling the governing form is imitating the gods.”
    • “[Plato] concludes with a generalization that all kinds of representational mediation are necessarily distant from the truth because none of them can do more than hold a mirror up to the phenomenal appearances of things (598b).”
  • p. 51: “The verbal “mirroring” of materiality is irrelevant to the reality of the physical world because that world exists prior to and independent of naming….words as human constructs are intrinsically flawed and have grown ever more debased over time as languages have changed and multiplied, distancing users from the truth of first names.”

Aristotle

  • pp. 58-59: “In Aristotle’s account of the meaning of meaning, language is, in important respects, invisible, particularly so in higher (scientific) forms of discourse.”
  • p. 60: “Regrettably, ontological rhetoric, the hallmark of which is reasoning from metaphysical constants, provides an intellectually respectable rationale for stereotypes that would be comic in its circularity if it weren’t so earnestly and dangerously applied as an instrument of oppression.”
  • p. 61: “Aristotle’s concept of specific difference is the linchpin of his metaphysics, identifying the essential being of an object, its intrinsic meaningfulness unmediated by any act of perception, cognition, or representation.”
  • p. 63: “Syllogisms don’t add to knowledge by making new knowledge; they only explore the latent details of what is already known…”
  • p. 65: “Aristotle’s topoi are places in the storehouse of cultural knowledge…that comprise the culture. In short, they are applications not to creativity but to memory.”
  • p. 66: Just the Facts
    • “The “facts” do not derive from acts of language but from acts of rational disputation.”
    • “Facts appeal to the mind, but words appeal to the emotions, and moving the audience is as important in practical discourse as convincing it.”
  • p. 67: “…the values and beliefs of ontological rhetoric”:
    • “Speakers are at the nearest remove from the truth of things-in-themselves, mirroring the world in language, responsible primarily for ensuring that the mirror is free of distortion.”
    • “Listeners are next in the hierarchy of reliability…”
      • When writing an unclear message, the best you can hope is that the reader gets a hold of you to clarify…
    • “Third in the hierarchy come writers, who have an additional burden of translating the signs of spoken language into the signs of written language…”
    • “And finally, lowest in the hierarchy, come poor readers…”

More Quotations from the Chapter

  • p. 71: “But for believers, for Augustine no less than for Plato and Aristotle before him (and for a great many others after them as well), the truths of a metaphysically ordered universe offer human beings a hope that the chaos, danger, evil, and irrationality of the world of Becoming are indeed comprehensible by reference to something purposeful behind them…”
  • p. 71: “Ontological rhetoric sponsors the Western epistemological perspective sometimes referred to as essentialism—a belief that the world’s ‘deep structure’ exists independent of the means of naming it…”
  • p. 72: “Ontological rhetoric proceeds from an attitude about the nature of the truth, not from the political valence of a particular conviction: right to life and right to choose can evoke equivalent doctrinal enthusiasm from their advocates.”
  • p. 75: “What is obvious in Cixous’s urging of women to ‘write through their bodies’ (886) is the essentially gendered nature of her understanding of writing, an ontological understanding that serves as metaphysical foundation for her feminist political engagement.”

Although one could push back against the idea of Cixous being “essentialist” because she has to ground the subaltern discourse in opposition to phallocentrism, which creates women’s narratives (patriarchy creates the feminine as other-than male), Knoblauch’s point is that advocates across the political spectrum have convictions that (often) come from essentialist perspectives and, in turn, those convictions reinforce essentialism…you know, T/truth.

SCOTUS Universalists

Let’s not worry about whether essentialist and universalist are interchangeable. We can return to that after Derrida–next month! Whenever I denigrate Antonin Scalia, people I associate with agree wholeheartedly; however, when I point out Ruth Bader Ginsburg is as flawed in her “universalism” (even though I might agree with her opinions), they get upset. How can a misogynist and a feminist icon be equivalent?

Antonin Scalia School Honoring Opinions Lawyers Entrust

Scalia makes made no secret of his ultra-Catholic beliefs, and it was obvious his understanding of religion guided/drove many of his opinions, especially those on the Establishment Clause and, of course, against women’s reproductive freedom.

  • Evidence of Scalia’s ultra-religious bias:
    • “…St. Catherine of Siena in Great Falls, Va., a church Scalia was said to favor because it was one of the few Catholic parishes in the Washington, D.C., area that still offered a Latin mass.” (Gjelten)
    • “Scalia and his wife raised nine children. ‘Being a devout Catholic means you have children when God gives them to you’…” (Gjelten)
    • Although Scalia denied religion had anything to do with his rulings… “Paul Clement, who clerked for Scalia…told NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg….’I think he thinks that his faith provides him clear answers,’ Clement said, ‘and I think that’s sufficient unto him in most areas.'” (Gjelten)
  • His SCOTUS opinions that demonstrate his ultra-religious bias:
    • Rather, ‘[w]ith respect to public acknowledgment of religious belief,” the Constitution permits the government to favor Judeo-Christian monotheism; “it is entirely clear from our Nation’s historical practices that the Establishment Clause permits this disregard of polytheists and believers in unconcerned deities, just as it permits the disregard of devout atheists.” (Colby 1106)
    • “in Van Orden [v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677 (2005)], Justice Scalia left no room for doubt that he believes that Ten Commandments monuments are constitutional…: “It’s not a secular message. I mean, if you’re watering it down to say that the only reason it’s okay is it sends nothing but a secular message, I can’t agree with you. I think the message [that the Ten Commandments monument] sends is that law is—and our institutions come from God. And if you don’t think it conveys that message, I just think you’re kidding yourself.”

My Southeastern Women’s Studies Association Conference presentation from 2021 mentioned Scalia…

  • Evidence of RBG’s religious bias:
    • “The Torah, the Jewish holy scripture, stresses the pursuit of justice where the outcome and the means to it are just, [Rabbi Abraham] Cooper said, and those beliefs were part of Ginsburg’s “Jewish spiritual DNA.” (Fields and Stapleton)
    • “The Jewish religion is an ethical religion. That is, we are taught to do right, to love mercy, do justice, not because there’s gonna be any reward in heaven or punishment in hell,” Ginsburg told the audience. “We live righteously because that’s how people should live and not anticipating any award in the hereafter.” (Fields and Stapleton)
    • “I am a judge, born, raised and proud of being a Jew. The demand for justice, for peace, for enlightenment runs through the entirety of Jewish history and Jewish tradition,” she said at the award ceremony. (Fields and Stapleton)

One might abhor one of these Justices and laud the other based on political ideology, but both believe religion guided their assumptions on the bench that led them to argue particular positions. And they both loved opera…

Arguments to Consider

What can we say about this response a voter has when she learns about Pete Buttigieg’s sexuality.

Conviction comes from essentialist perspectives and, in turn, reinforces essentialism. There is a circular “nature” to ontological rhetoric.

Next Class

Next week is Spring Break, and I’ll be out of town the week after–but you have work to do. The next class meeting will be Wednesday, 3/25, and here’s what you have to read before then:

Works Cited

Colby, Thomas. “A Constitutional Hierarchy of Religions? Justice Scalia, the Ten Commandments, and the Future of the Establishment Clause.” Northwestern University Law Review, vol. 100, no. 3, 2006, pp. 1097-1140, https://scholarship.law.gwu.edu/faculty_publications/457/

Fields, Gary and Sally Stapleton. “Ginsburg’s Empathy Born of Jewish History and Discrimination.” Associated Press, 24 Sept 2020, https://apnews.com/article/ruth-bader-ginsburg-race-and-ethnicity-discrimination-us-supreme-court-courts-1a8a92b60bd08a3ac05c29a787ff399e

Gjelten, Tom. “Scalia Expressed His Faith With The Same Fervor As His Court Opinions.” All Things Considered. NPR.com, 14 Feb 2016, https://www.npr.org/2016/02/14/466722712/scalia-expressed-his-faith-with-the-same-fervor-as-his-court-opinions

Knoblauch, Cyril H. “Rhetorical Constructions: Dialogue and Commitment.” College English, vol. 50, no. 2, 1988, pp. 125–40. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/377638.

White, James Boyd. Heracles’ Bow: Essays on the Rhetoric and Poetics of Law. U of Wisconsin P, 1985.