Contemporary Rhetorical Theory

G. Thomas Goodnight
Contemporary Rhetoric
Communication 511
Spring 2013




THEORIES OF RHETORIC & CULTURE


Scope & Purpose:
This course is a survey of major theorists contributing to the
study of rhetoric and culture. The course reflects a pivot from end of
the century to contemporary concerns. The course presents short, basic
readings that speak to theories of difference, postmodernity, post-
structuralism, deconstruction and cultural studies. The course turns to
issues of race, class, gender, and generation in contexts of material
discourse, vernacular embodiment, class circulation and strategies of
resistance. The strategy of the course is to follow the fusion of
literary, cultural theories with work published in the field of
communication.


Readings:
Readings will include materials on Blackboard. The following
books should be obtained. Constance Goh, The Democratic Promise: The
Individual Within Community, New York: Peter Lang, 2012; Julie Riskin
and Michael Ryan, eds. Literary Theory: An Anthology, New York:
Blackwell, 2004; Carol Bair, Gregg Dickinson and Bryan Ott, eds. Places
of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorial. Tuscaloosa,
University of Alabama Press, 2010.


Requirements:
The class is comprised of lecture and discussion. Students are
asked to prepare by reading for the class (priorities will be set for key
readings to be under discussion). Classes will be arranged so as
students will pick an essay to lead discussion, requiring a bit of spot
research on the issue or author in question. A final paper is the major
requirement of the class.





TENTATIVE SYLLABUS


1. FORMALISM & CLOSE TEXTUAL ANALYSIS
The section takes up the strategy of formal engagement of texts and close
textual analysis. The method is useful for artifacts that hold an
intentional configuration discovered through a reading that accounts for
semiotic moves and resultant qualities of understanding.
Boris Eichenbaum, The Formal Method, LT, 7-14.
Viktor Shklovsky, Art as Technique, LT, 15-21.
Cleanth Brooks, The Formalist Critics, LT, 22-27.
Cleanth Brooks, The Language of Paradox, LT, 28-39.
W. K. Wimsatt Jr., The Structure of the Concrete Universal, LT, 40-49.
Leff, M. (1992). Things made by words: Reflections on textual criticism.
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 78(2), 223–231.
Leff, M. C., & Mohrmann, G. P. (1974). Lincoln at Cooper Union: A
rhetorical analysis of the text. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 60(3),
346–358.
Warnick, B. (1992). Leff in context: What is the critic's role? Quarterly
Journal of Speech, 78(2), 232–237.


2. STRUCTURALISM, LINGUISTICS, NARRATOLOGY
This study introduces structuralism of Saussure's idea of linguistics.
This is important to know because Saussure becomes the object of
deconstruction in France and elsewhere. Also examined is the role of
language in shaping myths, folk-tales and the heart-beat of a culture.
The final move of the seminar will be to consider Walter Fisher's
narrative paradigm.
Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, LT, 59-71.
Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folk-tale, LT, 72-75.
Roman Jakobson, Two Aspects of Language, LT, 76-80.
Roland Barthes, Mythologies, LT, 81-89.
Seymour Chatman, The Structure of Narrative Transmission, LT, 97-124.
Fisher, W. R. (1984). Narration as a human communication paradigm: The
case of public moral argument. Communications Monographs, 51(1), 1–22.
Frasca, G. (2003). Simulation versus narrative. The video game theory
reader, 221–235.


3. RHETORIC, PHENOMENOLOGY AND READER RESPONSE
This seminar introduces the connection between human understanding,
experience and ideas—as these influence or are influenced by language.
Kant discusses the conditions of appreciation, Husserl figures how
experience generates ideas. Corbett and Lanham alert us to the play of
language while Fish takes meaning into communities of interpretation—with
distinctions. The seminar concludes by studying the aesthetic turn—the
lifeworlds as beautiful fiction.
Immanuel Kant, Transcendental Aesthetic, LT, 131-136.
Edmund Husserl, Ideas, LT, 137-141.
Edward P. J. Corbett, Classical Rhetoric, LT, 142-161.
Richard Lanham, Tacit Persuasion Patterns and a Dictionary of Rhetorical
Terms, LT, 177-194.
Stanley Fish, Not so much a Teaching as an Intangling, LT, 195-216.
Stanley Fish, Interpretive Communities, LT, 217-221.
John Frow, Text and System, LT, 222-236.
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction, LT, 237-245.
Poulakos, J. (1983). Toward a sophistic definition of rhetoric.
Philosophy & Rhetoric, 16(1), 35–48.
Whitson, S., & Poulakos, J. (1993). Nietzsche and the aesthetics of
rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 79(2), 131–145.
Greene, R. W. (2003). The aesthetic turn and the value of labor: Re-
thinking citizenship for a global economy. Conference Proceedings --
National Communication Association/American Forensic Association (Alta
Conference on Argumentation), 1, 144–150.


4. POST-STRUCTURALISM, DECONSTRUCTION, POST-MODERNISM
Modernity grounds language in productive aesthetic, social, and
institutional roles. Post-modernism was a move to undo master
narratives, spread skepticism regards to structured institutional
practices, and deconstruct texts, thereby exposing linguistic
constructions. This session explores the move to celebrate notions of
hybrid, heterogeneous cultures.
Friedrich Nietzsche, On Truth and Lying in an Extra-moral Sense, LT, 262-
264.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, LT, 266-270.
Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference, LT, 271-273.
George Bataille, Heterology, LT, 273-278.
Jacques Derrida, Difference, LT, 278-300.
Jacques Derrida, Semiology and Grammatology, LT, 300-331.
Helene Cixous, The Newly Born Woman, LT, 348-354.
Jean-Fracois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, LT, 355-365.
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations, LT, 366-378.
Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, LT, 378-388.
Pezzullo, P. C. (2003). Resisting "National Breast Cancer Awareness
Month": The rhetoric of counterpublics and their cultural performances.
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 89(4), 345-365.
Biesecker, B. A. (2002). Remembering World War II: The rhetoric and
politics of national commemoration at the turn of the 21st century.
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 88(4), 393-409.


5. PSYCHOANALYSIS AND PSYCHOLOGY
Post-structuralism and deconstruction emphasize psychoanalysis as the
resource for self-ordering. This seminar introduces basic Freudian
psychoanalysis, and then turns to Lacan. Lacan's view reinforces the
assumptions of post-modern culture. The session concludes with the
work of Chris Lundberg who believes Lacan structures the unconscious as a
language.
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, LT, 397-414.
Sigmund Freud, On Narcissism, LT, 415-418.
Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny, LT, 419-431.
Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, LT, 431-438.
Jacques Lacan, The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I,
LT, 441-446.
Jacques Lacan, The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, LT, 447-
461.
Frantz Fanon, The Negro and Psychopathology, LT, 462-469.
Lundberg, C. (2008). The Biggest Rhetoric of All: Restoring the
Tropological Heritage of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. In D. Zarefsky & E.
Benacka (Eds.), Sizing up Rhetoric (pp. 250–264). Waveland Pr Inc.
Lundberg, C. (2009). On Missed Encounters: Lacan and the Materiality of
Rhetoric. In B. A. Biesecker & J. L. Lucaites (Eds.), Rhetoric,
Materiality, & Politics (Vol. 13, pp. 161–184). Peter Lang.


6. HISTORICISMS AND THE VERNACULAR
Theorists shifted away from the historical paradigm in order to make the
construction of history evident. The idea was to widen the domain of
recovery, particularly for those without direct access to major event
history. The section concludes with visiting the vernacular and its
critiques.
Raymond Williams, The Country and the City, LT, 508-532.
E. P. Thompson, Witness and Against the Beast, LT, 533-549.
Nancy Armstrong, Some Call it Fiction: On the Politics of Domesticity,
LT, 567-583.
Louis Montrose, Professing the Renaissance: The Poetics and Politics of
Culture, LT, 584-591.
Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespeare and the Exorcists, LT, 592-620.
Eric Sundquist, Melville, Delany, and New World Slavery, LT, 621-640.
Howard, R. G. (2008). The vernacular web of participatory media. Critical
Studies in Media Communication, 25(5), 490-513.
Pollock, D., & Cox, J. R. (1991). Historicizing "reason": Critical
theory, practice, and postmodernity. Communications Monographs, 58(2),
170-178.
Hauser, G. A. (1998). Vernacular dialogue and the rhetoricality of public
opinion. Communications Monographs, 65(2), 83-107.
Cloud, D. L. (1999). The null persona: Race and the rhetoric of silence
in the uprising of'34. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 2(2), 177-209.


7. TRAUMA & THE SPACES FOR PUBLIC MEMORY
The outcome of material culture is concern for public memory as embodied
in places such as museums and monuments. This raises the question of
dealing with the unsettled, the disturbing in relation to social events,
identities, and disasters.
Dickinson, G., Blair, C., & Ott, B. L. (Eds.). (2010). Places of public
memory: The rhetoric of museums and memorials. University Alabama Press.
(selections)
Brunner, J. (2008). Trauma and Justice: The Moral Grammar of Trauma
Discourse. In A. Sarat, N. Davidovitch, & D. A. Bogazianos (Eds.), Trauma
and Memory: Reading, Healing, and Making Law (pp. 97–118). Stanford
University Press.
Bergo, B. (2009). Trauma and Hysteria: A Tale of Passions and Reversal.
In K. B. Golden & B. Bergo (Eds.), The Trauma Controversy: Philosophical
and Interdisciplinary Dialogues (pp. 205–234). State University of New
York Press.
Lambek, M. (2009). Terror's Wake: Trauma and its Subjects. In K. B.
Golden & B. Bergo (Eds.), The Trauma Controversy: Philosophical and
Interdisciplinary Dialogues (pp. 235–262). State University of New York
Press.
Grey, S. H. (2007). Wounds not easily healed: Exploring trauma in
communication studies. Communication Yearbook, 31, 174-223.

8. MARXISM TO CULTURAL MATERIALISM
Karl Marx remains an inspiration for communication studies, although the
questions of class, ideology, and influence remain contentious. The
purpose of this seminar is to acquaint students with a few of the basics,
move to major proponents of the Marxist view, and a contemporary
materialist who works to go beyond Marx (Cloud and Aune reply).
Karl Marx, The German Ideology, LT, 653-658.
Karl Marx, Wage Labor and Capital, LT, 659-654.
Karl Marx, Capital, LT, 665-672.
Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus, LT, 693-702.
Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, LT, 712-724.
Negri, A. (1991). Difference and the Future: Negative Thought and
Constitutive Thought. In The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's
Metaphysics and Politics (pp. 211–232). Univ. of Minnesota Press.
Greene, R. W., & Breshears, D. (2010). Biopolitical media. In L. S. Reed
& P. Saukko (Eds.), Governing the Female Body: Gender, Health, and
Networks of Power (pp. 186–205). Suny Press.
Greene, R. W., & Kuswa, K. D. (2012). "From the Arab Spring to Athens,
From Occupy Wall Street to Moscow": Regional Accents and the Rhetorical
Cartography of Power. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 42(3), 271-288.
Greene, R.W. (2011). Arguing with money: Reasonableness and change in
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In Robin C. Rowland
(Ed.), Reasoned Argument and Social Change: Selected Papers of the 17th
Biennial Conference on Argumentation. Washington DC: National
Communication Association, 537-544.
Greene, R.W. (2011). Pastoral exhibition: The YMCA Motion Picture Bureau
and the transition to 16MM, 1928-39. In Charles R. Acland and Haidee
Wasson (Eds.), Useful Cinema. Duke University Press.
Greene, R. W. (2004). Rhetoric and capitalism: Rhetorical agency as
communicative labor. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 37(3), 188-206.
Aune, J. A. (1998). Cultures of Discourse: Marxism and Rhetorical Theory.
In J. L. Lucaites, C. M. Condit, & S. Caudill (Eds.), Contemporary
Rhetorical Theory: A Reader (pp. 539–551). Guilford Press.
DeLuca, K. (1999). Articulation theory: A discursive grounding for
rhetorical practice. Philosophy & rhetoric, 32(4), 334-348.
Butler, J. (2010). Performative agency. Journal of Cultural Economy,
3(2), 147-161.


8. FRENCH AND THIRD WORLD FEMINISMS
Feminism is constituted of national and international movements. This
seminar takes up Irigaray and Cixous. Spivak crosses feminism with
postcolonial concerns. Anderson question Spivak's position of the double-
gesture and the humanities.
Luce Irigaray, The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of the
Feminine, LT, 795-798.
Luce Irigaray, Women on the Market, LT, 799-811.
Gayatri C. Spivak, Three Women's Text a Critique of Imperialism, LT, 827-
832.
Spivak, G.C. (1988) Can the Subaltern Speak? In Cary Nelson and Lawrence
Grossberg (Eds). Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (pp. 271-313)
London: Macmillan.
Anderson, A. (1992). Cryptonormativism and double gestures: The politics
of post-structuralism. Cultural Critique, (21), 63-95.
Davis, R. C. (1992). Cixous, Spivak, and oppositional theory. Lit:
Literature Interpretation Theory, 4(1), 29-42.
Audre Lorde, Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference, LT,
854-860.
Heng, G. (1997). 'A Great Way to Fly' Nationalism, the State, and the
Varieties of Third-World Feminism. Feminist genealogies, colonial
legacies, democratic futures, 30-45.
Biesecker, B. A. (1992). Towards a transactional view of rhetorical and
feminist theory: Rereading Helene Cixous's the laugh of the medusa.
Southern Journal of Communication, 57(2), 86-96.
Cixous, H., Cohen, K., & Cohen, P. (1976). The laugh of the Medusa.
Signs, 1(4), 875-893.


9. IDENTITY, TRANSFORMATION & GENDER STUDIES
Gender studies have been viewed as performative transformation invested
in counterpublic strategies. The positioning of a strategically informed
counterpublic sphere is stressed in this seminar.
Gayle Rubin, Sexual Transformations, LT, 889-892.
Michael Foucault, The History of Sexuality, LT, 892-899.
Judith Butler, Performative Acts and Gender Constitution, LT, 900-911.
Even Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, LT, 912-921.
Brouwer, D. C. (2005). Counterpublicity and corporeality in HIV/AIDS
zines. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 22(5), 351-371.
Ott, B. L., & Aoki, E. (2002). The politics of negotiating public
tragedy: Media framing of the Matthew Shepard murder. Rhetoric & Public
Affairs, 5(3), 483-505.
Thomas R. Dunn, Remembering Matthew Shepard: Violence, Identity, and
Queer Counterpublic Memories. Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 2010
Condit, C. M. (1989). The rhetorical limits of polysemy. Critical Studies
in Media Communication, 6(2), 103-122.
Mouffe, C. (2000). Deliberative democracy or agonistic pluralism. Reihe
Politikwissenschaft/Political Science Series, 72(3), 745-758.
Young, N. L. (2007). Identity trans/formations. Communication Yearbook,
31, 224.


10. ETHNIC LITERARY STUDIES, CRITICAL RACE THEORY
The African-American communities constitute a rich space for
communication practices that resist and participate in the public sphere.
This seminar takes up the black public sphere as appreciated and
appraised by critical race theory.
Ian F. Haney Lipez, The Social Construction of Race, LT, 964-975.
Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Interrogating 'Whiteness', LT, 975-986.
Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark, LT, 1017-1030.
Lisa Lowe, Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Marking the American
Difference, LT, 1051.
Frank, D. A., & McPhail, M. L. (2005). Barack Obama's address to the 2004
Democratic National Convention: Trauma, compromise, consilience, and the
(im) possibility of racial reconciliation. Rhetoric & Public Affairs,
8(4), 571-593.
Squires, C. R. (2006). Rethinking the black public sphere: An alternative
vocabulary for multiple public spheres. Communication Theory, 12(4), 446-
468.
McPhail, M. L. (1998). Passionate intensity: Louis Farrakhan and the
fallacies of racial reasoning. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 84(4), 416-
429.
Asante, M. K. (1998). An Afrocentric Theory of Communication. In J. L.
Lucaites, C. M. Condit, & S. Caudill (Eds.), Contemporary Rhetorical
Theory: A Reader (pp. 552–563). Guilford Press.


11. DIFFERENCE, PERFORMANCE, AND ETHNICITY
Dwight Conquergood raised the issue of cultural performance and
ethnicity. Ethnic identity becomes translated into public spaces. The
question of preserving and shaping the urban scenery raises issues of how
to study public culture.
Conquergood, D. (2002). Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical
Research 1. TDR/The Drama Review, 46(2), 145-156.
Conquergood, D. (1992). Ethnography, rhetoric, and performance. Quarterly
Journal of Speech, 78(1), 80-97.
Conquergood, D. (1991). Rethinking ethnography: Towards a critical
cultural politics. Communications monographs, 58(2), 179-194.
LaWare, M. R. (1998). Encountering visions of Aztlan: Arguments for
ethnic pride, community activism and cultural revitalization in Chicano
murals. Argumentation and Advocacy, 34(3), 140-153.
Lin, G. C. S. (2004). The Chinese globalizing cities: National centers of
globalization and urban transformation. Progress in Planning, 61(3), 143-
157.
Mbembé, J. A. (2004). Aesthetics of superfluity. Public culture, 16(3),
373-405.
Scott, R. L. (1977). Diego Rivera at Rockefeller center: Fresco painting
and rhetoric. Western Journal of Communication, 41(2), 70-82.


12. DIASPORA, POSTCOLONIALISM AND CIRCULATION
The 19th century was dominated by colonial discourse. The question arises
in the 21st century as to how the fragments of such formations still have
consequences and how those consequences can be resisted. Diasporatic
communities raise the possibility of multiple-selves as new media splits
work place commitments and cultural identities.
Edward Said, Jane Austen and Empire, LT, 1112-1125.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Decolonizing the Mind, LT, 1125-1150.
Homi K. Bhabha, Signs Taken for Wonders, LT, 1167-1184.
Hiller, H. H., & Franz, T. M. (2004). New ties, old ties and lost ties:
The use of the internet in diaspora. New Media & Society, 6(6), 731-752.
Kim, Y. (2011). Diasporic nationalism and the media Asian women on the
move. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 14(2), 133-151.
Melkote, S. R., & Liu, D. J. (2000). The role of the Internet in forging
a pluralistic integration: A study of Chinese intellectuals in the United
States. International Communication Gazette, 62(6), 495-504.
Srinivasan, R. (2006). Indigenous, ethnic and cultural articulations of
new media. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 9(4), 497-518.
K. Thompson, Border crossings and diasporic identities: Media use and
leisure practices of an ethnic minority, Qualitative Sociology, 2002.
Shome, R. (2006). Postcolonial interventions in the rhetorical canon: An
"other" view. Communication Theory, 6(1), 40-59.


13. TERROR, VIOLENCE AND DISCOURSE
The war on terror occupied the first decade of the 21st century. This
was a time of increasing corporate power, declining national identity,
and the reassertion of ethnic difference and violence. The question of
the state, communication and violence ends the course. Goh is a book
that is widely read at present, extending Agamben's position.
Constance Goh, Chapter Two. The (Im)possibility of Justice as the
Messianic, and Chapter Three. "The Terra/Terror of Time in Political
Action, in The Democratic Promise: The Individual Within the Community,
2012.