tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50065851808578808212024-02-07T22:57:27.432-06:00Calls for Papers & TOCs in Rhetoricsyntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.comBlogger1198125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-59652334569151152562019-10-07T02:17:00.000-05:002019-12-31T20:09:13.381-06:00Blogora Classic: Aune on Academic Style, 2006-07-17<h2 class="title" style="border: 1px solid rgb(136, 136, 136); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding: 0.5em;">
<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060904085215/http://rsa.cwrl.utexas.edu/?q=node/757" style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: cyan;">Academic Style: Poetes Maudits, </span></a></h2>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: cyan;">One good thing about blogging is that it gives one something to do at 3 a.m. when you can't get back to sleep, and the world is in chaos. First a Wikipedia definition:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: cyan;">--A poète maudit (French: accursed poet) is a poet living a life outside or against society. Abuse of drugs and alcohol, insanity, crime, violence, and in general any societal sin, often resulting in an early death are typical elements of the biography of a poète maudit. The first poète maudit, and its prototype, was François Villon (143a1-c. 1474) but the phrase wasn't coined until the beginning of the 19th century by Alfred de Vigny in his 1832 drama Stello, in which he calls the poet “la race toujours maudit par les puissants de la terre.” Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud are considered typical examples.--</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: cyan;">What I have come to find puzzling over the last ten years (it hit me with a vengeance the year I taught at Penn State), is the peculiar combination of academic careerism and the--er--"valorization" of a poete maudit's style of life. Examples: Foucault's "limit experience" being hit by a car while on opium, Bataille's pornography, Deleuze's death (once praised to me by a graduate student), Nietzsche's madness. 1960's versions: the breakdowns, addictions, and suicides of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell, John Berryman--the whole "confessional" school of American poetry. And the "popular" culture of the Velvet Underground, the Sex Pistols, Patti Smith, and on and on. For a young person of a certain temperament, this sort of thing is worse than crack.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: cyan;">It's not an ideology, because it is almost empty of argument--maybe "structure of feeling" is a better term. It has recurred steadily since the industrial revolution (Benjamin's "shock effects," I guess, as an aesthetic of coping with urban life). In its academic form: "a focus on the garbage of history," as Grossberg put it in at NCA last fall. It has developed into a particular--nod here to Hariman, il miglior fabbro--academic style.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: cyan;">By jim at 2006-07-17 03:44 | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060904085215/http://rsa.cwrl.utexas.edu/?q=blog/6" style="font-weight: bold;" title="Read jim's latest blog entries.">jim's blog</a> | <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060904085215/http://rsa.cwrl.utexas.edu/?q=user/login" style="font-weight: bold;">login</a> or <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060904085215/http://rsa.cwrl.utexas.edu/?q=user/register" style="font-weight: bold;">register</a> to post comments | 190 reads</span></span></div>
syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-54932311798177579262019-09-19T20:26:00.000-05:002019-09-19T20:26:01.789-05:00"Write in the Army Style" -- Essays<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-84466620086988244942019-09-12T20:25:00.000-05:002019-09-12T20:25:00.584-05:00"Write in the Army Style" -- Military Autobiography<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-32179142946643754672019-09-05T19:04:00.001-05:002019-09-05T19:33:25.347-05:00Other Genres: An After Action Report, from "Write in the Army Style"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Other Genres: An After Action Report, from "Write in the Army Style"</div>
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<br />syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-4097517517833582712019-09-02T02:11:00.000-05:002019-09-05T19:09:30.892-05:00Blogora Classic: Aune on Gouldner on Theory-Making, 2006-07-23<h2 class="title" style="border: 1px solid rgb(136, 136, 136); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding: 0.5em;">
<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060904072734/http://rsa.cwrl.utexas.edu/?q=node/786" style="background-color: black; color: #665566;">Gouldner on Theory-Making</a></h2>
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<span style="background-color: black;">I've been meditating today on this statement by sociologist Alvin Gouldner (probably the main influence on my own work):</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;">"Much of theory-work begins with an effort to make sense of one's experience. Much of it is initiated by an effort to resolve unresolved experience; here, the problem is not to validate what has been observed or to produce new observations, but rather to locate and to interpret the meaning of what one has lived. . . . Theory-making, then, is often an effort to cope with threat; it is an effort to cope with a threat to something in which the theorist himself is deeply and personally implicated and which he holds dear" (The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, 1970: 484).</span></div>
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syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-90139869679113636172019-08-12T02:04:00.000-05:002019-08-12T02:04:01.226-05:00Blogora Classic: Aune on Sovereign Performatives, 2006-08-11<h2 class="title" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(136, 136, 136); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding: 0.5em;">
<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060904064147/http://rsa.cwrl.utexas.edu/?q=node/836" style="color: #665566; text-decoration-line: none;">Sovereign Performatives</a></h2>
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I continue to muse on the differences between rhetoric in English and in Comm; I suspect that by the time I retire there will be nearly complete convergence between the two institutionally, partially for good (it's only logical), and partially for bad (continued marginalization in NCA, and displacement of rhetoric by cultural studies/media studies as locus of humanities research in Comm departments). I am one of the few NCA rhetoricians of my generation to have been educated in a department that offered theater, oral interpretation, speech correction (!), and "speech" (a core of public speaking, argumentation, persuasion, and American public address)--in other words, a department centered almost entirely on performance. The model eventually failed everywhere, partially because of conflicting temperaments between "drama" and "communication" types, partially because of the rise of bad social science in NCA circles in the 1ate 1960's, and partially because of the inherent conflict between scholarship and a heavy emphasis on teaching undergraduate performance through extracurricular activities. Traces of the old model still survive at places like Memphis, where Communication is in a College of Fine Arts.</div>
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My department, which does a remarkably good job with undergraduate teaching despite our heavy research productivity and huge classes (e.g. 250 people in history of rhetoric), is charged--like the rest of A&M--to start planning for "enhancement of the undergraduate experience." At worst, this is going to mean some sort of testing/measurement of "outcomes," but it's a good conversation to have. Here's my problem: why is it that we cannot teach undergraduate performance effectively? There are two "skills" courses in speech: public speaking and argumentation. They are, for the most part, taught well, although they are staffed nearly 100% by graduate students, most of whom have very little background in oral performance themselves. From that point on, the most we have are group oral presentations in our 400-level classes, and, of course, oral reports in graduate courses. To put it bluntly: the skills aren't there, across the board, except for students with high school or undergraduate forensics experience (we do not have forensics at A&M). What is to be done?</div>
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syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-38216799091135270872019-07-29T02:02:00.000-05:002019-07-29T02:02:00.213-05:00Blogora Classic, Aune on Fascisms, 2006-08-11 <h2 class="title" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(136, 136, 136); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding: 0.5em;">
<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060904064147/http://rsa.cwrl.utexas.edu/?q=node/838" style="color: #665566; text-decoration-line: none;">Fascisms</a></h2>
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Staying on message, both POTUS and Santorum used the term "Islamo-fascism" this week. I've posted on this before, but here again is a summary of Umberto Eco's classic essay on Ur-Fascism, for purposes of comparison:</div>
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1. Cult of tradition: there is some original wisdom (pre-philosophical) that we have lost:<br style="line-height: 0.6em;" />a. Either "pure" (non-Jewish) Christianity or pre-Christian Indo-European mythology<br style="line-height: 0.6em;" />b. Occult elements (hostility to science)</div>
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2. Rejection of modernity:<br style="line-height: 0.6em;" />a. Rejection of science and technology (except as tools for warfare)<br style="line-height: 0.6em;" />b. Suspicion of capitalism, especially big business, for destroying traditional communities<br style="line-height: 0.6em;" />c. Rejection of liberty and equality as fundamental values (rejection of the Enlightenment)</div>
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3. Cult of Action for Action's Sake:<br style="line-height: 0.6em;" />a. Hostility to intellectuals and intellectual life as subversive of traditional values AND as unconnected to the "real" world of toughness and action<br style="line-height: 0.6em;" />b. Thinking is a form of emasculation</div>
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4. Dissent is betrayal: science proceeds by testing all hypotheses, liberal democracy by opening public issues to discussion and debate; no fascist can accept criticism.</div>
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5. Fear of difference (racial, cultural, ideological): everyone must think alike (or be eliminated from the community)</div>
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6. Springs from individual or social frustration: especially targets the frustrated middle class, envious of the rich but afraid of social pressure from below. The old "proletariat" or working class, having improved its lot in Europe and the U.S. post-WWII is now perhaps the greatest potential audience for a new Fascism, as it feels its economic gains slipping away.</div>
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7. Obsession with conspiracies: both outside the nation (xenophobia) and within (the perennial Jewish conspiracy from the inside).</div>
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8. Disciples must feel humiliated by the enemy's strength and power; paradoxically, the enemy is at once too strong and too weak.</div>
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9. Life is a permanent war; there must be a "last battle," "Armageddon," "final solution" after which an era of peace is created.</div>
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10. Scorn for the weak; "popular elitism": the people belong to the best people in the world, but there must be leaders, because the masses are like children, needing to be led.</div>
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11. Cult of death: the final reward for a heroic life.</div>
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12. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Fascist transfers his will to power onto sexual questions. This is the origin of machismo: contempt for women plus an intolerant condemnation of nonconformist sexual habits, especially homosexuality.</div>
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13. Populism: the "people" are no longer represented by the courts, the executive, and the legislature. Politics-as-usual is rotten.</div>
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14. Use of Newspeak (George Orwell, 1984): use of language to prevent critical and complex reasoning. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.</div>
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Part of the original essay, with references, is here:</div>
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<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060904064147/http://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/Umberto_Eco_-_Eternal_Fascism.html" style="color: #665566; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;">http://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/Umberto_Eco_-_Eternal_Fascism.html</a></div>
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syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-28451770589793814742019-07-22T01:58:00.000-05:002019-07-23T14:01:36.583-05:00Blogora Classic: Aune on Method, 2006-08-19<span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span>
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<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060904064135/http://rsa.cwrl.utexas.edu/?q=node/861"><span style="color: #444444;">Method</span></a></h2>
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<span style="color: #444444;">I'm finally getting down to work on my next project--on the Gastonia strike of 1929 and its fictional and scholarly representations. Here's a stab at describing my "method"; if anyone has a minute, please point out strengths and weaknesses:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;"><b>A. Implicit rhetorical theory as recurring theme in my scholarship</b>1. Political “languages” or ideologies address or imply</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;">a. an ideal form of persuasion/communication, and</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;">b. a model of how people change their minds.</span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #444444;">2. Sometimes a rhetorical theory is explicit, as in Plato, Aristotle, or Kant, but in others (since the 18th century) it has to be reconstructed, usually by attention to these key moments in the text</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;">a. representations of crowds and audiences,</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;">b. representations of oratory and other persuasive messages, including the “repertoire” (Charles Tilly) of actors in contentious politics</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;">c. signs of social anxieties about forms of communication (usually fear of the Mob or of deceptive elites)</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;">d. representations of “sparks”—moments of popular mobilization or popular quiescence (e.g. Plato’s “beautiful lie,” or the neoconservative belief in the need of philosophers to lie to the democratic public)</span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #444444;">3. Both fictional and philosophical texts can be studied this way.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;">4. Methodological influences:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;">a. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (especially the classic first chapter describing differing narrative strategies in Homer and in the book of Genesis).</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;">b. Wayne Booth’s ethical criticism (The Company We Keep)</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;">c. James Boyd White’s constitutive rhetoric (When Words Lose Their Meanings)</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;">d Edwin Black on the “Third Persona”and Christine Oravec on the Whig and Jacksonian styles in antebellum American political discourse</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;">e. Derridean deconstruction’s attention to moments of figural and conceptual instability in texts (or Althusser’s symptomatic reading—attention to the non-dit—the not-said—and moments of décalage—slippage).</span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-size: 14.4px;">5. For example, in Selling the Free Market (2001) I studied the fictional and political discourse of radical libertarians, demonstrating that libertarianism as an ideology has a distinctive, and highly limited, view of communication: communication and persuasion are reduced to information exchange and cost-benefit analysis, ignoring the “friction” created by social norms and emotions.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;">6. Rhetoric and Marxism (1994): Classical Marxism contained an internal inconsistency or décalage: why should anyone revolt if history follows a deterministic sequence of modes of production? An inability to theorize political persuasion itself led to efforts by later Marxists (especially the Western Marxists) to fill in the gap between “structure” and “struggle,” culminating in Habermas’ theory of communicative action.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;"><b>B. Practice theory (getting from micro level of text to the macro structural level)</b>1. Emphasize specific social practices, including rhetorical strategies and tactics (a la De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life—what kind of everyday “resistance” do the weak use?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-size: 14.4px;">2. Understand the “structure of the conjuncture”: structural changes occur through practice—the values learned in practice become the new structure. Social change often occurs through failed structural reproduction along traditional lines, in which new “meanings” become central to re-structuration.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;">3. Practices as efforts to resolve social, political, economic contradictions (Ortner on Sherpa monasteries in High Religion)</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;"><b>C. Big Theory questions:</b>1. Is the Structure/Agency opposition a “constitutive” one? i.e., an ongoing debate within Western culture, because of its own inherent contradictions? (Bourdieu, in Pascalian Meditations, says rather cynically that the opposition persists because it’s part of the academic game to attain symbolic capital by locating oneself within a particular school of thought).</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;">2. Explicit and implicit accounts of rhetorical action are especially fruitful to analyze in understanding Sahlins’ “structure of the conjuncture.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;">a. Structure-oriented Marxists ignored issues of meaning and rhetoric—as Sewell writes, Marxist used to link “mere” and “rhetoric” the way they linked “rising” and “bourgeoisie.”</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;">b. More action-oriented social historians have neglected the role of public rhetoric as an important nexus of the elite and the popular.</span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #444444;">So, is rhetoric (discursive strategies and tactics) itself the primary site at which one can observe the structure/agency problem in social life?</span><br />
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syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-73280598906754391072019-07-17T22:43:00.000-05:002019-07-17T22:43:04.233-05:00Blogora Classic: July 06, 2005, Aune on TextbooksBlogora Classic: July 06, 2005, Aune on Textbooks<br />
<i>Is this still true? Since the publication of Joshua Gunn's textbook, I hope not... --David</i><br />
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Tomorrow morning I'm off to San Francisco as part of a junket (I feel just like Tom DeLay) sponsored by a textbook publisher. About 10 teachers of public speaking are going to meet for two days in a posh hotel to be a focus group for improving textbooks.<br />
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There are a number of really good rhetoric and composition textbooks out there, reflecting the seriousness with which our English comrades take pedagogy. There is not, to put it bluntly, a single public speaking text that is worth the price. When I teach Honors Public Speaking (the only version I get to teach these days) I usually put together a packet of readings or else use Karlyn Campbell's The Rhetorical Act. What I can't figure out is why publishers think that these texts need to be so visually stimulating. I wonder if a better alternative might not be some kind of computer software, an expanded and improved version of powerpoint, that included examples and exercises for audience analysis, outlining, evidence, reasoning, and delivery--the delivery part could work like foreign language cd-roms now, with audio files of correct pronunciation.<br />
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I guess one of the reasons why these texts are so bad is that a significant number of the teachers of the basic course are graduate students who themselves lack sufficient skills in oral performance to design a unique course adapted to their university. The texts thus need to be recipe-like in order to make it easier to lecture and do assignments.<br />
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Any thoughts?syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-39075258645714928542019-07-10T22:42:00.000-05:002019-07-10T22:42:02.680-05:00Blogora Classic: July 02, 2005, Aune on Scholarly PleasuresBlogora Classic: July 02, 2005, Aune on Scholarly Pleasures<br />
<br />
I'm working on an essay on Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire, so I've been plugging some holes in my knowledge of the culture and politics of the period (1848-1851). It's been nice to discover a scholar I hadn't been familiar with before--the Marxist art historian T.J. Clark, who is an absolute model of what the engaged critic should be in his two books: Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution and The Absolute Bourgeois: Artists and Politics in France 1848-1851. I also have been reading Balzac--first Pere Goriot, and starting on The Wild Asses' Skin. Great, enjoyable reading--vocation and avocation together, as Frost puts it in "Two Tramps in Mudtime":<br />
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But yield who will to their separation,<br />
My object in living is to unite<br />
My avocation and my vocation<br />
As my two eyes make one in sight.<br />
Only where love and need are one,<br />
And the work is play for mortal stakes,<br />
Is the deed ever really done<br />
For Heaven and the future's sakes.syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-91248152751639172102019-06-24T22:43:00.000-05:002019-06-24T22:43:09.477-05:00From Zen and communication, by BERNARD TETSUGEN GLASSMAN, SENSEI<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-11668714281502797912019-06-17T14:09:00.000-05:002019-06-17T14:09:00.258-05:00Carey on Dewey<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-66218188561084391652019-06-14T12:28:00.000-05:002019-06-14T12:28:03.534-05:00From Obscenity and Verbal Violence by Rollo May<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-49777211974163523582019-06-12T12:26:00.000-05:002019-06-12T12:26:00.773-05:00From The Distrust of Words by Rollo May<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-23410814989402328082019-06-09T22:51:00.002-05:002019-06-09T22:51:30.531-05:00More from "Zen and communication" by BERNARD TETSUGEN GLASSMAN, SENSEI<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-79406781727540611822019-06-09T12:21:00.003-05:002019-06-09T12:21:40.126-05:00From Language, Symbols and Violence by Rollo May<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-60589232373206900642019-05-13T21:00:00.000-05:002019-05-13T21:00:00.205-05:00Blogora Classic: Aune on I Heart Adorno Part Zwei, May 03, 2005<h2 style="color: #006699; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: medium; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;">
May 03, 2005</h2>
<h3 style="color: #006699; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: medium; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;">
I Heart Adorno Part Zwei</h3>
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The Ashton translation of Adorno's <em>Negative Dialectics</em> into English is notoriously riddled with problems. I just found this terrific <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20050523114942/http://www.efn.org/~dredmond/ndtrans.html" style="color: #8fabbe;">website</a> with a complete English translation and study guide. N.B. the section on rhetoric at the end of the Introduction.</div>
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I'm working on a (perhaps unpublishable) set of reflections on rhetoric, aesthetics, and politics in imitation of Adorno's paratactic writing. Some preliminary notes follow. Comments are very welcome, even if just to tell me not to quit my day job.</div>
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Rhetoric, Aesthetics, Culture</div>
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In Lieu of a Preface [A problematic rhetorical form, at least since Hegel’s Phenomenology. Each paragraph of the preface announces a theme that will be taken up in subsequent chapters. Composition in parataxis first gains the good will of a certain kind of audience, just as hypotactic composition does another. I want to persuade both, but the audience for paratactic discourse is a “harder sell.”]</div>
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Christian Wolff invented a technical language for German philosophy. Baumgarten coined the term “aesthetics.” Kant posed the problems subsequent philosophers of aesthetics would try to solve, all the way down to Adorno.</div>
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This work is written amid the ruins of Adorno’s Aesthetics. It rejects the whole “German” isolation of aesthetics from other arts of language, especially rhetoric, yet even in that rejection it must make its arguments speak German—if only because—if there remains anyone yet with an open mind capable of being persuaded—it would be a good thing if the Germans learned to speak the language of Greek and Roman rhetoric that they destroyed in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries.</div>
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Only a mutilated reality is capable of missing what rhetoric once meant to culture.</div>
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The strategy, then, is bound up with the canon of Disposition: paratactic reflections imitating Adorno, or—going back further—the aporetic early dialogues of Plato, yet unlike Adorno, culminating in an oration on the classical model: exordium, partitio, confirmatio, refutation, digressio, peroratio.</div>
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Only out of the most radical program of cultural reaction will we find resources for an exodus from the administered world, a newer form of the Great Refusal. The name of this program? Ciceronian Marxism. [This is not a Burkeian perspective by incongruity. Perhaps Marxist Republicanism would be better, but by personifying Communism and Republicanism in their two most important rhetors, the figure stresses agency and personality—two factors which, if rejected, in the name of scientific socialism or post-structuralist interpellation, lead to the Cult of Personality.]</div>
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Out of the ruins of liberalism—in its statist and its laissez-faire varieties—and out of the ruins of Communism, a renovated republicanism proposes an end to Empire, a new order of the ages, a new virtue. [This book also is composed in the shadow of two academic best-sellers: Hardt and Negri’s Empire and Multitude. In fetishizing constituent power, out of a dubious reading of Spinoza, they neglect the necessity of the Constitution. They refuse the Written Constitution—the American innovation—and thus the rule of law, without which every revolution founders.]</div>
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From Adorno: the figure of the constellation. What pattern emerges out of the conjunction of rhetoric, poetics, aesthetics, ethics, politics, law as they move at different speeds through the only history we know? What content will find its form both in the world and separate from it? In Invention, the prospect of thought endlessly circulating to avoid compromising its revolutionary goal helps imagine a different kind of audience, a virtuous audience capable of taking up arms for the republic.</div>
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Another constellation: the Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, 1848, the Paris Commune, St. Louis, 1905, 1917, 1989. We are not yet done representing these moments, or understanding the forces of attraction and repulsion they still exert on each other.</div>
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We will not be afraid to use the word “Bourgeois.” [It is so much easier to hate them now—the bourgeoisie. Will the role of hatred and revolutionary violence in this book seem dangerous or, at best, the gauchiste reflections of an armchair socialist? I hope not, and, like Marx and Engels themselves, I refuse to rule out the possiblity of a peaceful evolution toward socialism, even in the U.S., which is capable of mounting the greatest bourgeois resistance. My emphasis on the rule of law and Constitutional—rather than “constituent”—power is intended to check those forces which prolong revolutionary violence beyond the amount that is absolutely necessary.] But we may be skeptical about the word “Proletariat”—in part because of the mixing of linguistic and historical codes, yet mostly because of the disintegration of a proletarian public sphere—if not of the Proletariat itself. For the first time, the Proletariat does not recognize itself as such. [Let us avoid any ethnocentrism here, by noting that across the Globe some proletariats continue to recognize themselves as such. In contrast to Lenin, who attacked capitalism at its weakest link, I propose attacking capitalism at its strongest link: the United States and, particularly, the rural and Southern United States. Revolution in “America” means, a fortiori, revolution everywhere else. Revolution in Texas means, a fortiori, revolution throughout the U.S.] The perennial search for new subjects of revolution, since at least Marcuse, begins anew. This time, however, the task is to persuade the subjects that, like the branch bent by the water, they were always whole, and always stronger than it appeared. [from Robert Bly, Sleepers Joining Hands]</div>
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As Timpanaro observed, one finds in the poetry of Leopardi the possibility of secular solidarity—in the struggle of humanity against nature. See the conclusion of La ginestra: La Ginestra O Il Fiore del Deserto (Broom Or The Flower of the Desert) (tr. Eamon Grennan)</div>
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[conclusion]</div>
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[Nature]: She's the one he calls the enemy,<br />
And believing the human family<br />
Leagued to oppose her, as in truth it is<br />
And has been from the start, he sees<br />
As allies all men, embraces all<br />
With unfeigned love, giving and expecting<br />
Prompt assistance, useful aid<br />
In the many hazards and lasting hurts<br />
Of the common struggle [Della guerra comune]. And he believes<br />
It sheer madness<br />
To arm your hand against another,<br />
Lay snares or stumbling blocks for your neighbor,<br />
As mad as, in a state of siege--<br />
Surrounded by enemies, the assault at its height--<br />
To forget the foe and in blind rage<br />
Turn your force upon your friends,<br />
Smite with the sword, sow havoc and panic<br />
Amongst those fighting on your own side.<br />
When ideas such as these are clear,<br />
As once they were, to the common people,<br />
And when the terror that first forged<br />
For human beings the social bond<br />
Against the savagery of nature<br />
Shall, in part, be again restored<br />
By a true grasp of things as they are, then<br />
Justice and mercy<br />
And an open, honest civil life<br />
Will no longer take root in those swollen fables<br />
On which our stolid common morals<br />
Are mostly grounded, and where they stand<br />
As steady as anything built on sand.</div>
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Posted by jim at May 3, 2005 10:26 PM</div>
syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-11951095848662282992019-05-13T08:43:00.000-05:002019-05-13T08:43:03.803-05:00Rhetorics in Unusual Places: From my "Military Leadership" class, at Marquette University's ROTC program<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-58381599831943419602019-05-06T08:42:00.000-05:002019-05-06T08:42:03.324-05:00Rhetorics in Unusual Places: From my "Military Leadership" class, at Marquette University's ROTC program<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-43122914657290675012019-05-06T08:04:00.000-05:002019-05-06T08:04:00.141-05:00Blogora Classic: Aune on Weaver, March 26, 2005<h2 style="color: #006699; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: medium; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;">
March 26, 2005</h2>
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Rhetorical Concepts V: Richard Weaver</h3>
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<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20050402040751/http://www.knowsouthernhistory.net/Biographies/Richard_Weaver" style="color: #8fabbe;">Richard Weaver</a> (1910-1963): The study of rhetoric as a cure for the cultural crisis engendered by science, industrial capitalism, and “mass” education/communication.</div>
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I. Life:<br />A. Grew up in Asheville, NC, and Lexington, KY. Attended U of Kentucky, where he joined the Socialist Party.<br />B. Attended Vanderbilt, where he studied with the Southern Agrarians (I’ll Take My Stand) John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate. They argued against modern science and industrial capitalism, defended an agriculture-based society like that of the Old South (but without slavery).<br />C. Taught at TAMU from 1937-1939, where he “encountered a rampant philistinism, abetted by technology, large-scale organization, and a complacent acceptance of success as the goal of life. Moreover, I was here forced to see that the lion of applied science and the lamb of the humanities were not going to lie down together in peace, but that the lion was going to devour the lamb unless there was a very stern keeper of order.” As he drove back to College Station in the fall of 1939 he realized he didn’t have to go back, and instead turned around and enrolled at LSU for his PHD.<br />D. Taught at U of Chicago for many years, primarily lower-level writing courses (which he enthusiastically volunteered for). Author of Composition: A Course in Reading and Writing (1957); Ideas Have Consequences (1948); The Ethics of Rhetoric (1953); and Visions of Order (1964).<br />E. Helped found Modern Age and National Review, as well as the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (publisher of Intercollegiate Review—if you want a free subscription, ask me). Like Russell Kirk (The Conservative Mind), he was a supporter of the “traditionalist” wing of American conservatism, as opposed to “libertarians” and “fusionists,” who were most concerned about free enterprise and anti-Communism, respectively. Traditionalists believe the central problem facing us today is cultural decay.</div>
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II. Some core ideas:<br />A. Defense of rhetoric:<br />1. “Language is sermonic”: a critique of the social-scientific, journalistic, and general semantics view that you can have neutral, “objective,” “scientific” communication. ALL acts of communication take a point of view and attempt to persuade</div>
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<br />2. Healthy cultures have a balance of dialectic and rhetoric. “Dialectic is abstract reasoning on the basis of propositions; rhetoric is the relation of the terms of these to the existential world in which facts are regarded with sympathy and are treated with that kind of historical understanding and appreciation which lie outside the dialectical process” (Visions of Order, 56). Education or journalism that is only negative, always questioning assumptions is destructive.<br />3. My favorite definition of rhetoric (from his essay on the Phaedrus): “So rhetoric at its truest seeks to perfect men by showing them better versions of themselves, links in that chain leading up to the ideal, which only the intellect can apprehend and only the soul have affection for. This is the truly justified affection of which no one can be ashamed, and he who feels no influence of it is truly outside the communion of minds. Rhetoric appears, finally, as a means by which the impulse of the soul to be ever moving is redeemed.”<br />B. A healthy culture:<br />1. Has a “tyrannizing image”: the idea of a culture’s excellence, embodied in ritual, scripture, literature, codes of conduct, enforced standards of value and exclusion: “A culture integrates by segregating its forms of activity and its members from those not belonging.” Culture satisfies a deep-seated psychic need. (Note that TAMU has the lowest crime/violence rate of any US university.)<br />2. A healthy culture has style: recognized in:<br />a. Elaboration: more than the merely functional—it is “over the top” in some way<br />b. Rhythm: clear marking of beginnings and endings<br />c. Distance: a sense of grandeur, monuments, courtesy</div>
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<br />C. Types of argument:<br />1. Argument from definition: analysis of Lincoln: In dealing with slavery, other leaders looked to law, American history, or practical expediency. Lincoln asked: “is the negro a man?” William F. Buckley’s favorite definition of conservatism: “The true conservative is one who sees the universe as a paradigm of essences, of which the phenomenology of the world is a sort of continuing approximation.”<br />2. Argument from circumstance: basing conclusions on standards such as: will it work, is it useful? Analysis of Edmund Burke, who argued against firm principles in politics (the attack on Burke was part of a debate in American conservatism in the 1950's about the relevance of English conservativism to the American experience).<br />3. The abortion debate is a classic example of a conflict between argument from definition and argument from circumstance.<br /></div>
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Posted by jim at March 26, 2005 03:37 PM</div>
syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-14220464366175601342019-04-29T08:41:00.000-05:002019-04-29T08:41:16.920-05:00Rhetorics in Unusual Places: From my "Military Leadership" class, at Marquette University's ROTC program<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-6730724195654884422019-04-29T08:03:00.000-05:002019-04-29T08:03:00.972-05:00Blogora Classic: Reading Hardt and Negri's Multitude? March 25, 2005<h2 style="color: #006699; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: medium; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;">
March 25, 2005</h2>
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Reading Hardt and Negri's Multitude?</h3>
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The Political and Social Theory Reading Group at Texas A&M; is taking on Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's <em>Multitude</em> this month. As part of our ongoing experimentation on the Blogora with new ways of discussing books, I will periodically post some comments and questions on Multitude, and I hope others will join in.</div>
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A full text of Paolo Virno's <em>Grammar of the Multitude</em> (by one of Negri's associates on the Italian far left) is available <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20050402040719/http://www.generation-online.org/c/fcmultitude3.htm" style="color: #8fabbe;">here</a>.</div>
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I believe the work is of interest for rhetoricians for four reasons:<br />1. For better or for worse, Hardt and Negri are now the most widely-read Left theorists in the world, so understanding the sources and popularity of their influence is important for those studying the rhetoric of social movements.<br />2. Building on <em>Potere operaio</em>'s concept of the "social" worker from the late 1960's, Hardt and Negri contend, persuasively I think, that contemporary capitalism enlists all of social life--especially communicative labor, the production of affects--in capitalist production and reproduction. The result is that, although the industrial working class remains important, the "multitude" as potential revolutionary subject is much larger in scope than in classical marxism.<br />3. Their work is an effort to replace previous philosophical foundations of Marxism with post-structuralism--Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari replace Hegel. Here, I believe, is where they go wrong: Hegel was essential to Marx's thought, especially his <em>Logic</em>, and any effort to de-Hegelianize Marx ends up rejecting Marxism itself.<br />4. And, to invoke the ongoing theme of my own writing, Hardt and Negri continue to disappoint by undertheorizing persuasion.</div>
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Posted by jim at March 25, 2005 10:22 PM</div>
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Comments</h2>
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I haven't finished the book yet, and while I have some problems with their arguments in general, I should add to Jim's "why this is of interest" that they offer an interesting account of publics--or, what they call the multitude. My question, as always, is "is this 'democracy'"? Even by their own definition? ("government for all by all") If their best example of the multitude in action is the WTO protests--admittedly an inspiring event of multiple interest groups sharing common ground--was that "democracy"? Did those protest groups get into the WTO and did they get to voice their opinion to decision makers? Did they get to participate as decision makers themselves? Even if we say that they reached the general public with their message, did that general public have any power to act on their message??? I think not. If there is no opportunity to make decisions within the Empire, then how can the Multitude be the answer? Isn't it always about power afterall? I think that their "Empire" represents the classical definition of corruption--it enforces law and order, but is subject to none itself--how do we stop corruption? Historically, hasn't the answer been revolution, not working within the corrupt empire?</div>
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Like I said, I haven't finished the book yet, but these are my nagging questions about 2/3s through.</div>
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Posted by: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20050402040719/mailto:mercieca@tamu.edu" style="color: #8fabbe;">jen m</a> at March 26, 2005 10:41 AM</div>
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I haven't even started _Multitude_ (since _Empire_ makes me want to toss the book across the room; "new barbarism" my arse!), but your comments about the de-Hegelizing of Marxism are very apt. To combat that move we can enlist Zizek, and should, as the newer and emerging voices in rhetorical studies are very busy zapping mediation . . . Social movement theory can continue to de-Hegelize rhetoric only at the expense of rhetoric (though, I admit I do very much admire the efforts of Ron Greene and others to create visions of rhetoric without dialectics; I simply fear that rhetoric, which I still contend is a logic and phenomenon of mediation, evaporates).</div>
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Posted by: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20050402040719/http://rsa.cwrl.utexas.edu/mt-comments.cgi?__mode=red;id=1190" style="color: #8fabbe;" target="_blank" title="http://members.cox.net/jgunn2/">Josh Gunn</a> at March 26, 2005 12:29 PM</div>
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I like that, Josh: rhetoric as a logic and phenomenon of mediation. Oh, hell, do I finally have to take Zizek seriously (insert smiley face here)?</div>
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Posted by: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20050402040719/mailto:jaune@tamu.edu" style="color: #8fabbe;">jim</a> at March 26, 2005 11:25 PM</div>
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I think, Jen, that H/N would say that all power generates its own resistance, and that the more globalized the power is, the more globalized the possibility of resistance is.</div>
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The WTO protests in Seattle might have been exciting to a lot of people, but I'm not sure one can stake revolutionary possibilities on that one action, and there have been mighty few since then.</div>
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I believe that we need to be able to "toggle" back and forth from actions by the multitude to more conventional political acts (increasing foreign aid, a la Jeffrey Sachs' new book, promoting the rule of law and fighting torture, making the Bush Administration take the Bill of Rights seriously). It's not a question of either/or (as a certain kind of American radical continues to think).</div>
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Posted by: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20050402040719/mailto:jaune@tamu.edu" style="color: #8fabbe;">jim</a> at March 26, 2005 11:29 PM</div>
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Yes, I agree that theirs is a concept of resistance, which seems to be Foucauldian for them. But, what is resistance to the corruption of Empire? I'm re-reading William Freehling's Road to Disunion right now for my grad seminar and H&N;'s resistance seems an awful lot like slave resistance as F. describes it--when the terror of the despot is so complete both psychologically and physically (H&N;'s biopower) all the oppressed can do is find ways to "bother" The Master. True resistance is futile because the costs are too great and often unthinkable because the conditioning is so complete. Resistance may slow down the wheels of the machine, but does it stop the machine? Does resistance result in freedom? And, when the wheels of the machine are so odious, what would Mario Savio have us do? Throw our bodies against the gears and the levers until the machine breaks. Or, until the machine is accountable to the wishes of the multitude. And, that is the rub for me. How can we make the corrupt, despotic Empire accountable to the multitude? Where is our seat at the table? (and, damn could I use more clichés??)</div>
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I'm proud to be an American radical: good company I'm in! But, I'm just asking for what we've been promised: Democracy. I suppose democracy is radical afterall, esp. since we're so far from it now. If H&N; are right about the Empire, then we really have moved so far away from what could be a democratic society, that it is once again a radical, revolutionary struggle.</div>
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Posted by: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20050402040719/mailto:mercieca@tamu.edu" style="color: #8fabbe;">jen m</a> at March 27, 2005 11:19 AM</div>
syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-48074190725255421942019-04-22T08:40:00.000-05:002019-04-22T08:40:07.174-05:00Rhetorics in Unusual Places: From my "Military Leadership" class, at Marquette University's ROTC program<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-60768122302323847902019-04-22T07:55:00.000-05:002019-04-22T07:55:02.026-05:00Blogora Classic: Leopardi, "La Ginestra" March 20, 2005<h2 style="color: #006699; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: medium; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;">
March 20, 2005</h2>
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Leopardi, "La Ginestra"</h3>
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From my spring break reading, a lovely poem by Leopardi--the basis of a common, secular political ethic:</div>
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La Ginestra O Il Fiore del Deserto (Broom Or The Flower of the Desert) (tr. Eamon Grennan)</div>
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[conclusion]</div>
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[Nature]: She's the one he calls the enemy,<br />And believing the human family<br />Leagued to oppose her, as in truth it is<br />And has been from the start, he sees<br />As allies all men, embraces all<br />With unfeigned love, giving and expecting<br />Prompt assistance, useful aid<br />In the many hazards and lasting hurts<br />Of the common struggle [Della guerra comune]. And he believes<br />It sheer madness<br />To arm your hand against another,<br />Lay snares or stumbling blocks for your neighbor,<br />As mad as, in a state of siege--<br />Surrounded by enemies, the assault at its height--<br />To forget the foe and in blind rage<br />Turn your force upon your friends,<br />Smite with the sword, sow havoc and panic<br />Amongst those fighting on your own side.<br />When ideas such as these are clear,<br />As once they were, to the common people,<br />And when the terror that first forged<br />For human beings the social bond<br />Against the savagery of nature<br />Shall, in part, be again restored<br />By a true grasp of things as they are, then<br />Justice and mercy<br />And an open, honest civil life<br />Will no longer take root in those swollen fables<br />On which our stolid common morals<br />Are mostly grounded, and where they stand<br />As steady as anything built on sand.</div>
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Posted by jim at March 20, 2005 01:32 PM</div>
syntaxfactoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07047950390509950295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006585180857880821.post-2759191221162038092019-04-22T07:54:00.000-05:002019-04-22T07:54:00.323-05:00Blogora Classic: Aune on Hermeneutics, March 19, 2005<h2 style="color: #006699; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: medium; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;">
March 19, 2005</h2>
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Rhetorical Concepts IV: Hermeneutics</h3>
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<br />I. Meaning of "hermeneutics":<br />A. Greek word "hermeneia"=<br />1. Interpretation by "speech" itself, since language interprets what is in a person's mind.<br />2. Translation from an unintelligible language into an intelligible one (e.g. the hermeneia of tongues in I Cor. 12:10)<br />3. Interpretation by commentary and explanation.<br />4. Note the connection with the god Hermes.<br />B. Issues:<br />1. Does "original intent" matter? Or the "significance" to readers in future contexts? How creative may the interpreter be?<br />2. What about texts with alleged divine AND human authorship? Is there a deeper principle for framing interpretation, e.g. Luther's distinction between identifying the "law" and the "gospel" in every biblical text?<br />3. Does every act of human communication involve, to a greater or lesser degree, the "hermeneutic" problem?<br />4. The hermeneutic circle? (Schleiermacher, 19th c. German theologian, taught that in order to interpret part of a text one must understand the whole text, and vice versa.)</div>
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C. Current debates:<br />1. E.D. Hirsch: "meaning" and "significance" must be distinguished in textual interpretation; Hirsch famously said "I do not wish to be part of an enterprise in which it is impossible to be wrong," and so one can, as part of literary study, reconstruct through historical evidence the author's "meaning" as "intention."<br />2. H-G. Gadamer: interpretation is a "fusion of horizons" between text and interpreter--the reader "goes native" in the text.<br />3. Derrida: texts are profoundly unstable entities in which the authorial intention is often subverted by choice of figures or examples.<br />4. In US constitutional law, there is an ongoing struggle between those who rely on original intent, text (plain meaning), and institutional structure to construe the constitutional text, and those who treat the constitution as an "evolving" entity, more like the common law itself--adapting to new circumstances through creative application by judges. On these issues, see especially Philip Bobbitt, <em>Constitutional Fate</em>.<br /><br />II. The Jewish tradition:<br />A. Distinction between guide to action (halakhah, the "way" or "path"), which is seldom revisable or adaptable to new circumstances; and the actual biblical narratives, which were interpreted very freely: midrash (creative interpretation, for preaching purposes).<br />B. Example: Numbers 25: 6-13. The men are busy whoring with the Moabite women. and the women entice the Israelites to worship Baal-peor, their false god. ."One of the Israelites came and brought a Midianite woman over to his companions, in the sight of Moses and of the whole Israelite community who were weeping at the entrance of the tent of meeting. When Pinchas [the name means "Nubian," or "Negro," interestingly enough], son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, saw this, he left the assembly and, taking a spear in hand, he followed the Israelite into the chamber and stabbed both of them, the Israelite and the woman, through the belly. Then the plague against the Israelites was checked. . . . Hashem spoke to Moses saying, 'Pinchas, the son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the Israelites by displaying among them his passion for me, so that I did not wipe out the Israelite people in my passion. Say, therefore, 'I grant him my pact of friendship. It shall be for him and his descendants after him a pact of priesthood for all time, because he took impassioned action for Hashem, thus making expiation for the Israelites." One rabbinic commentator, troubled by the brutality of the passage, claims that Pinchas knew that this man and woman were "beshert," that is, soul mates for all eternity, and killed them immediately that they might be together forever.</div>
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III. Medieval Christian tradition:<br />A. Familiar couplet:<br />Littera gesta docet; quit credas allegoria;<br />moralis quid agas; quo tendas anagogia<br />B. Four senses; useful as a way of generating sermon ideas<br />1. Literal: Moses leading the people Israel through the Sea of Reeds<br />2. Allegorical: "Prophecies" the Christian notion of "baptism"<br />3. Moral: How has the congregation personally been led out of danger into salvation?<br />4. Anagogical or eschatological: This passage prefigures our live in Heaven, the "Promised Land." [In his Rhetoric of Motives, Kenneth Burke discusses the notion of "socio-anagogic" interpretation, in which a literary work is seen to symbolize the resolution of class conflicts.]</div>
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IV. The Protestant Reformers:<br />A. Attacked excessive allegorical interpretation (although believed that events in the Hebrew Bible did prefigure the "New" Testament). (Anglicans were less troubled by allegorical interpretation, and elaborate speculations about the biblical text.)<br />B. Emphasized the "literal" and "moral" sense.<br />C. Puritans' attitude toward the literal and emphasis on the "plain style" affected their preaching and, later, the attitude of many early Americans toward the notion of a written constitution, which they wanted free from the interpretive chicanery of lawyers (who were viewed much like the overly ingenious Catholic and Anglican preachers).<br />D. We are thus, as Sanford Levinson points out in <em>Constitutional Faith</em>, fighting out a battle between "Catholic" and "Protestant" interpretation.</div>
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Posted by jim at March 19, 2005 05:28 PM</div>
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