This is a paper I wrote for Dr. Nate Johnson’s History of Rhetoric class in the fall of 2021. This was my first graduate class on rhetoric and this paper is my attempt to make sense of rhetoric and make it my own. Since I’m a guy who’s spent decades in engineering., I tend to mashup STEM language with the humanities language of rhetoric.
Fragments of an Ignorant, Interdisciplinary Model of Rhetoric
The title of this essay needs some explanation. Although I’m a Ph.D. student in rhetoric, my background in it is woefully lacking compared to my peers; thus, by definition, I’m ignorant at this stage of my studies. I’m not using “ignorant” as a self-deprecating term or a pre-emptive defense for my claims in this essay but rather as a statement of fact. From an agnotology perspective, I categorize my ignorance as “native state” (the first of three types): a vacuum that I’ll fill with knowledge of rhetoric over the years. Should the ignorant (like me) make claims about rhetoric with only minimal knowledge? I think so, and it’s an active-reading, dialogue technique I use to engage with new material, assess strengths/weaknesses, and “make it my own” where I make claims after reading a bit and then see if the author affirms or challenges them.
While ignorant in rhetoric, I have a technical background spanning decades and a cultural studies MA which means I bring a unique interdisciplinary perspective to the study of rhetoric. Typically, an interdisciplinary approach involves different folks from different fields interacting to create new perspectives and solutions; e.g., scientists and librarians collaborating to solve the “science information problem” of the early 1960s (Johnson 1375). This forced collaboration is a standard brainstorming technique in industry and military; however, in this essay, it’s just me processing rhetorical information from this course through a technical/cultural studies lens. Following the precepts of brainstorming, I’ll state whatever notions and model of rhetoric make sense to me now without concern if they’re intuitively obvious to rhetoric scholars or even long dismissed. My ultimate goal is to create a model of rhetoric I can use for my digital rhetoric research, because at this early stage I haven’t found anything I’m particularly happy with. I must also mention I’m not irrevocably wedded to the ideas in this essay nor am I arguing that these are rhetoric absolutes. This essay is simply a starting point and, like most things in the humanities, is intended to spur more questions and deeper thought on the human condition even if the model itself doesn’t prove fruitful.
There’s no doubt George Kennedy knows what he’s talking about with respect to rhetoric, but his quizzical reflection on his life’s work and his quest for a general rhetoric in his 1992 “Hoot in the Dark” essay highlights for me a troubling aspect of rhetoric: ambiguity in its definition, theory, and application. This is where my interdisciplinary perspective rears its ugly head. Many may be quite comfortable with the variety of rhetoric definitions, but I want to find something clearer, more definitive like the definition of entropy, a concept that shares the same characteristic as rhetoric in that it’s fundamental to many disciplines. Kennedy does offer the concept of “rhetorical energy” and states that “Rhetorical assertion conveys energy and can spark reaction in another energy source” (3). While I like the physics-based language, my concern here is with the word “can” – I would replace it with “must.” For me, rhetoric must generate a response in another to qualify as rhetoric. Without a response, how is rhetoric different from any other communication? I’m then in agreement with Lloyd Bitzer when he states that rhetoric “functions ultimately to produce action or change in the world” (3). On the other hand, Kennedy suggests that anything, such as language, “physical actions, facial expressions, gestures, and signs” are rhetorical (4). I agree that these can be rhetorical, but there must be a significant (i.e., non-trivial) response of some sort to make them rhetorical. In this way, I’m closer to Wayne Booth’s definition of rhetoric as “the entire range of resources that human beings share for producing effects on one another” (xi). Blending Booth and Bitzer results in a definition of rhetoric that resonates with me: rhetoric produces effects on others that result in a change in the world. Where Kennedy’s rhetoric includes potential effects that may or may not manifest; Booth’s, Bitzer’s, and my rhetoric must have concrete effects. This is but one example of the ambiguity inherent in the discussion of rhetoric I’ve noticed. I, too, share Booth’s concern that “defining any term [like rhetoric] so broadly risks making it seem useless” (xii). Rhetoric is far too important to let that happen.
Given the ambiguity and expansiveness of rhetoric in modern scholarship, I see an opportunity and freedom to define rhetoric with little chance that I’ll make egregious, indefensible errors. Thomas Rickert in his 2015 “Preliminary Steps Towards a General Rhetoric” essay works toward developing a general rhetoric as Kennedy did in 1992 and references him liberally; i.e., it seems the “general rhetoric” problem is still open to debate, and it’s this debate that inspires my musings on rhetoric. As stated earlier in response to Kennedy’s query about the nature of rhetoric, I claim that rhetoric is the gravity of culture – it holds it all together. Here, I am defining rhetoric as a force essential to the unity and maintenance of cultures; i.e., there is no culture without rhetoric. Conversely, there’s no rhetoric without culture – these two have a Yin-Yang relationship that’s as inseparable as Saussure’s signifier and signified. This foregrounding of culture in my understanding of rhetoric reflects my background in cultural studies, especially my interest in the impact cultural/rhetorical texts have on audiences. Thomas Rickert makes a similar claim to mine when he states that general rhetoric is “an emergent, worldly capacity that all life and all cultures respond to and develop” (415). For me, Rickert’s inclusion of “all life” in his definition of rhetoric is too broad and drifts dangerously close to the “useless” category that troubled Booth; thus, I limit my rhetoric definition to sentient beings and their cultures, not just any life. Further, Rickert develops his rhetoric theory starting with a single, solitary lifeform in an environment whereas my starting point is a culture of beings: my rhetoric starts as culture centric while Rickert’s starts as individual centric. That said, my approach to rhetoric should not be considered wildly different than Rickert’s, and I am not totally rejecting his approach. In fact, I think my model of rhetoric would have significant Venn diagram overlap with Rickert’s.
While many have characterized rhetoric as a force or energy, I will now explore taking the physics-based force metaphor a bit further as a budding interdisciplinary rhetorician with a technical background is wont to do. If rhetoric is a force, then Newton’s Laws of Motion naturally come to mind. Here’s one translation resulting in parallel “Cultural Laws of Rhetoric” (NASA Glenn Research Center):
Frankly, there’s nothing earth shattering about these somewhat tongue-in-cheek Cultural Laws of Rhetoric revealed through this metaphorical exercise: they seem simple and commonsensical, but they do provide an interesting lens to view current events. The 1st Law focuses on changes within a culture, and these are the result of rhetorical forces from two types of rhetors: those within the culture (intracultural rhetors) and those outside it (intercultural rhetors). Note I am not treating a collection of individuals as a monolithic culture; however, I am stating there are common elements of the individuals’ intersectionality (e.g., race, gender, citizenship, class, sexuality, religion, etc.) rhetors may target to define a culture (whether real or fabricated) and maximize an audience’s size to gain the greatest effect from the rhetorical force deployed. Per the 1st Law, it is up to the rhetors to decide if they will frame the culture they target as static or dynamic; e.g., in modern American politics, static culture rhetors are typically Republicans and dynamic culture rhetors are typically Democrats. There are, of course, other non-rhetorical forces in nature that impact cultures (climate change, disease, natural disasters, etc. that Bitzer defines as non-rhetorical exigences since they cannot be modified); however, it’s the response of rhetors to these and the rhetorical forces they deploy that result in enduring changes to culture (6). One of the most egregious examples of the 1st Law is colonialism where one culture and its intercultural rhetors unleash rhetorical forces to drastically change another culture with tragic results. This is a negative result, but the 1st Law doesn’t preclude positive results – it’s agnostic just like all of Newton’s Laws of Motion are.
The 2nd Cultural Law of Rhetoric is concerned with the magnitude of the rhetorical force needed to affect change in a culture. Large rhetorical forces are needed if the mass of individuals is large and/or the change in the direction of the culture is large. The acceleration in Newton’s 2nd Law is change over time in velocity, either in direction and/or magnitude. In physics, direction may be thought of as a path of a point over time. In culture, direction may be thought of similarly as a conceptual path of beliefs, values, and norms individuals follow over time; i.e., there are specific cultural expectations at each stage of an individual’s life. It makes sense that large changes in the direction of a culture – changes in its beliefs, values, and norms – will require significant rhetorical force: there will certainly be resistance as culture tends to prefer no change per the 1st Law. But why would a small change for a large mass require significant rhetorical force? The problem lies in the intersectionality of the individuals. The larger the mass, the greater the opportunity for intercultural and intracultural rhetors to define subsets of culture and apply their rhetorical force to them to resist change. A good example of this is the small change asked of individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic: wear a mask in public and get vaccinated. Wearing a mask is little different than wearing clothes in public, and vaccines are a standard requirement for schools and many workplaces – they aren’t controversial and have saved innumerable lives; however, various intracultural rhetors resisted this cultural change. Per the 1st Law, they were part of static cultures, and, per the 2nd Law, they were resisting change literally to the death. Significant rhetorical forces were deployed (rhetorical texts in the form of efficacy data, bribes, pleading, mandates, videos, etc.) to affect change, but resistance persisted. The inevitability of this resistance is implicit in the 2nd Law.
The 3rd and final Cultural Law of Rhetoric explicitly states the resistance concomitant when one culture attempts to change another culture, specifically via intercultural rhetors and the rhetorical forces they deploy. The most important aspect of this law is the proportionality of the resistance: the culture oppressed will generate rhetorical forces comparable in magnitude to resist the rhetorical forces used on them. The oppressing culture’s rhetorical forces will be overt and are typically much better documented in the rhetorical archive than the oppressed culture’s rhetorical forces which may be more subtle and transitory and therefore difficult to document. The 3rd Law has archival implications for colonialism and other attempts at cultural oppression: if the archive doesn’t contain texts of rhetorical resistance comparable in volume to the texts of the oppressor’s rhetoric, then it is deficient. Unfortunately, the nature of oppression guarantees that recovering the myriad rhetorical texts of the oppressed (most at the lowest levels of rhetoric such as letter writing and personal, coded discussions) will never match the magnitude of rhetoric recovered from the oppressors who tend to have much better documentation. What the 3rd Law implies is the oppressed resisted using various rhetorical forces that were greater in extent than we can ever hope to recover – it defines the magnitude of the archival knowledge vacuum necessary to fully document the rhetoric of the resistance. Consider this a corollary of the 3rd Law.
The foregoing discussion of Laws is meant to show there is value in considering rhetoric through an interdisciplinary cultural/scientific lens and to lay the groundwork for more observations about rhetoric using this approach. For the next portion of this essay, I’ll make a series of ignorant, interdisciplinary claims about rhetoric and discuss them mimicking the format of Kennedy in his “Hoot” essay. Although I am dabbling with the notion of a “general rhetoric,” I have no qualms about using definitions and characteristics. Rickert doesn’t see general rhetoric “as a definition (i.e., rhetoric is an x with these characteristics)” yet he does indeed define rhetoric using a “thrivation” term he coined, which he says represents a “flourishing” which “cannot be narrowly conceived” (416). He then critiques Kennedy for seeking a “non-Greek ground to anchor a new conception of rhetoric’s essence…within the natural world” but failing to do so because Kennedy’s energy concept flowed “through the three corner of the Aristotelian (or communications) triangle” (416). Ironically, in Rickert’s quest to develop a general rhetoric that escapes the haunting Greek tradition, he has simply taken the Aristotelian concept of eudaimonia (flourishing), tweaked it, and rebranded it as thrivation. You know, “thrivation” just wouldn’t look as good on my Jeep (see Fig. 1). The lesson I take from this is not to dismiss Greek rhetorical concepts out of hand but to use whatever fragments make sense to further my understanding; i.e., treat the scholarship of rhetoric as an endless buffet with a huge bowl of Greek salad sitting at the end next to the plates and silverware – you just can’t ignore it.
This notion of building on older knowledge (like Greek) to develop new ideas is a standard engineering approach; however, in the humanities some scholars seem to have an impulse to forcefully reject a previous concept so that their concept may fill the void (I’ll revisit this in Gries’ and Edbauer’s critique of Lloyd Bitzer’s rhetorical situation). I suppose I’m forcefully rejecting this approach of forcefully rejecting older ideas. Building is better, and it’s the foundational concept for every medical and technological advancement. I’ll now posit some claims (in no particular order) that inform my model of rhetoric based on my various academic influences and the notion of rhetoric as a force.
Claim 1: Rhetoric is a chain of conscious choices.
Evidently, this is more controversial than I thought. Bitzer states that “a work is rhetorical because it is a response to a situation of a certain kind,” and this, to me, implies a choice on the part of the rhetor whether to produce a work or not (3). During the process of creating a work, there are innumerable other choices the rhetor must make which are related to traditional rhetoric canons of invention, arrangement, and style. To guide the rhetor’s choices, Bitzer highlights the elements of his rhetorical situation – exigence, audience, and constraints – that the rhetor must consider in their decision-making process to craft an effective rhetoric work (8). But the chain of conscious choices doesn’t stop there: the audience has many choices to make in determining if the rhetor’s work will result in what Bitzer calls “altering reality” (3). Will the audience accept themselves as the unified whole the rhetor demands? Will the audience accept the exigence the rhetor claims? Not every exigence – “a defect, an obstacle…a thing which is other than it should be” per Bitzer – demands a response (6). If the audience accept the validity of the exigence, will the audience also accept the validity and need for the rhetor’s work (a solution to the “defect”)? Finally, will the audience act in a manner the rhetor requests, will they do nothing, or will they do something different? My point is effective rhetoric results from a chain of conscious choices on the part of the rhetor as well as the audience, and any broken link in the chain will result in failed rhetoric.
While this chain of conscious choices for rhetoric makes sense, it seems to become controversial when scholars grapple with theorizing general rhetoric. Rickert claims that rhetoric, at its most fundamental, occurs when “one being is able to communicate to other beings in some fashion” and uses an example of camouflaged butterflies as a rhetorical lifeform (417-8). To me, a butterfly’s coloring in not rhetorical as it falls into Bitzer’s non-rhetorical exigence category since the lifeform did not choose its coloring – it’s simply a product of nature. Had a lifeform assessed the predators of its environment, chosen a camouflage technique, and applied it to elude death from its audience, then that would be rhetorical. (BTW, butterfly camouflage seems a none-too-subtle metaphor for race. Rickert then suggests that race can be inherently rhetorical, and I’m suggesting that race became rhetorical only through centuries of rhetors working to make it so.) While Rickert doesn’t require choice to play a definitive role on the part of the rhetor, he states that “Choice, and the freedom underpinning choice are crucial here” and that “Choice goes hand in hand with interpretation” (418). It’s the audience’s choices that Rickert addresses, not the rhetor’s. This passive, unchoosing rhetor also appears when Kennedy states in his general rhetoric essay that he’s “inclined to say that the ability to give a sign, even without intent or belief [my emphasis], is basic to rhetoric” (9). Thus, the primary difference between my understanding of rhetoric and that of Kennedy and Rickert is that I believe choice is essential for both rhetor and audience, while Kennedy and Rickert suggests choice need only reside in the audience.
Since I am repeatedly invoking Bitzer and his rhetorical situation, I must briefly address the critique of Gries (Note that Edbauer in “Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies” makes a similar argument as Gries to replace the rhetorical situation with a network approach). Gries states that:
Gries also notes that many scholars think of Bitzer’s rhetorical situation as a “rather static scene of entities perceived as already formed, stable and discrete” (15). That’s not what I took away from Bitzer’s rhetorical situation essay. In fact, as I stated earlier, I see one of the first choices rhetors must make is what audience they will craft to receive their rhetorical work. Based on my cultural studies background, I understand that individuals in audiences are inherently intersectional and thus audiences can be somewhat unstable although rhetors naturally try to establish and maintain stability. Furthermore, the word “static” appears nowhere in Bitzer’s essay, and his rhetorical situation does not preclude dynamics. To me, what Bitzer defined with his rhetorical situation was the atom of rhetoric. Like atoms, these rhetorical situations are constantly bouncing into each other, interacting, and generating (and perhaps destroying) elements of new rhetorical situations (rhetors, texts, and audiences). Far from rejecting the applicability of the rhetorical situation to networks, I argue that every node of Gries’ “divergent networked activity” is a de facto rhetorical situation; however, the word “node” was curiously absent in Gries’ essay on rhetorical networks and in Edbauer’s essay on networked rhetorical ecologies (15). As an engineer, the idea of defining a network without defining the nodes is a significant oversight. Ironically, Gries seems to make my case with the network remixing of the Obama Hope image: this text from a specific rhetorical situation bounces into a variety of different rhetors at different nodes who remix it and present it in new rhetorical situations for new target audiences. The process then repeats through the network creating a multiplicity of remixed images (Gries 10). This dynamic approach to a network of rhetorical situations also helps explain the circulation of visual rhetoric which Gries says is the “central inquiry that drives Still Life with Rhetoric” (20). To me, Gries’ and Edbauer’s dismissal rather than complication of Bitzer’s rhetorical situation was unfortunate and a missed opportunity in both cases where the drive to create a new theory seemed stronger than the drive to build on what came before.
Claim 2: Rhetoric is amoral and agnostic.
If rhetoric is a force like gravity, then it has the same amoral and agnostic characteristics. For an engineer like me accustomed to dealing with forces, amorality poses no issues; however, Ryan Skinnel in Octalog 4 states “good men speaking well retain a position of nearly-unquestioned permanence in rhetorical theory,” and rhetorical historians have been focused on “finding good examples of good people from widely diverse races, genders, classes, and epistemologies speaking well” (1). This attraction to the good from rhetoric is understandable from a humanities perspective; however, Skinnel warns us that we ignore “bad people speaking effectively…at our own peril” (2). Indeed, if we don’t understand how rhetors wield rhetoric for evil ends (oppression, pollution, exploitation, inequality, etc.), the good from rhetoric may not matter in the long run. Foregrounding the fact that rhetoric is amoral and agnostic and therefore universally available to all no matter their intent or background will serve us better as rhetoricians and free us from the value judgements when we study the dark side of humanity.
Claim 3: Rhetoric creates concrete effects.
I concur with Bitzer’s belief that “rhetoric is pragmatic” and “it functions to produce action or change in the world” (3). These changes then produce concrete effects. Some may argue that simply transferring an idea into the mind of a spectator is sufficient for rhetoric; however, if that idea doesn’t eventually result in some effect that changes objective reality, it doesn’t meet Bitzer’s criteria for rhetoric. To characterize these effects of rhetoric, I build on the notion of rhetoric as a force and state that rhetoric is a force used to start, stop, continue, or prevent human action via the creation and presentation of texts. The physics overtones from the Cultural Laws of Rhetoric in Table 1 are completely intentional. While stopping and starting human action results in a visible change in objective reality, continuing or preventing human action also alters reality by eliminating potential futures that would have been.
Since rhetoric is amoral, the ethics of the rhetorical effect should also be considered. One way to approach this is to assess who the rhetorical effect – which manifests in audience action – benefits. For this, I’ll modify elements of economic historian Carlo Cipolla’s peculiar “The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity” essay where he defines people based on who their actions benefit: themselves and/or others. Yes, the use of the word “stupid” is a bit over the top, but it adds a jolting emphasis and clarity when assessing the effect(s) of rhetoric. Rather than labeling people, which is totalizing and unfair, I’m labeling the rhetoric based on the rhetor’s desired effects and effects the audience produce as they change objective reality.
While the rhetor’s desired effects in Table 2 may result in the audience acting accordingly; e.g., the rhetor’s “selfless rhetoric” results in the audience choosing to follow it and act in a manner that only benefits others (this can be altruistic, oppressive, or something in between), the audience may choose another, unintended option. One example is the case where a rhetor’s “intelligent rhetoric” is interpreted as “selfish rhetoric” by the audience, and the audience acts in a way that only benefits themselves. Thus, Table 2 effectively presents a rich matrix of rhetorical possibilities between rhetor and audience.
Claim 4: Rhetoric is comprehensible.
Although there are many reasons why an audience reacts to rhetoric in an unexpected way, the rhetoric the rhetor chooses must be clear and easily comprehensible for the intended audience to maximize the opportunity to achieve the desired effect. As an example of this, I’ll use rhetorical scholarship since these rhetoricians function as rhetors with other scholars and students as their intended audience. As with almost all cultural texts, they can be placed on a spectrum of comprehensibility that ranges from ambiguous on one side (multiple meanings) to concrete on the other (singular meaning) as shown in Figure 2.
On the ambiguous side of the spectrum, there is avant-garde film which started in the 1920s as a reaction to WWI. As rhetoric, these films are ambiguous in that the audience is not provided a direct, concrete course of action from the filmmakers. The rhetoric of Victor Vitanza during the Octalogs has similar ambiguous overtones in that the audience is not sure what to do with his theatric presentations. On the other hand, documentary films tend to document a problem and provide a solution expecting that the audience will follow its direction, whether that means eating less sugary foods, sending money to a specific charity, or voting for a particular candidate. Iris D. Ruiz is similarly clear when stating her desire to “recenter and reclaim minoritized ways of knowing and provide nuanced antiracist ways of being in the world and conducting research” (46). There’s little doubt she wants the audience to follow her lead and conduct their research as she does. One troubling trend I’ve noticed over the years is rhetors from oppressed communities tend to deal in concrete rhetoric, but those rhetors comfortable in their place are much more likely to wallow in ambiguous rhetoric. Some may even see ambiguous rhetoric as a self-indulgent luxury that only hegemony can afford. To sum up, ambiguous rhetoric confuses audiences, but concrete rhetoric clearly directs audiences to produce concrete effects.
Claim 5: Rhetoric is temporal.
There’s a parallel in rhetoric to the temporality of affect: emotions are transient (don’t last long) and moods are enduring (can last a while). Just like there are multiple definitions for rhetoric, there are also multiple definitions of affect/emotion/mood in the literature. In this case, I’m using affect as the umbrella term for emotion and mood. Referring back to my notion of rhetoric as a force and that is used to start, stop, continue, or prevent human action; transient rhetoric maps neatly onto stopping or starting human action while enduring rhetoric maps onto continuing some action. The point here is the duration of the effects of rhetoric, what the rhetor requests vs. what the audience actually does, should be considered in the analysis of rhetoric.
Claim 6: Rhetoric is scalable.
Simply put, rhetoric may be applied to an audience that ranges in size from one individual to whatever large number of individuals a rhetor can conglomerate to produce concrete effects. While the same rhetoric may be used as the audience grows, the rhetor may also choose to alter the rhetoric to increase its appeal. Scale is clearly a function of audience.
Claim 7: Rhetoric is plot, product, presentation, and performance.
The five canons of rhetoric (invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery) are still useful, but I’d like to introduce a slightly different set that foregrounds the audience while generalizing rhetoric for any rhetorical text rather than only speech. I start with plot which covers the design and creation of a rhetorical text, which would includes invention, arrangement, and style. The use of the word design is intentional. Design, like rhetoric, flows across disciplines and doesn’t necessarily have an academic home. Furthermore, design depends upon rhetoric to function; however, rhetoric is rarely mentioned in design literature. This inherent but ignored linkage between design and rhetoric should be a fruitful target for future rhetoric scholars, so I want to emphasize its role in plot. Why the word plot? Plot underscores the narrative nature of rhetoric in describing the exigence of the rhetorical situation in a way that appeals to the desired audience as well as the narrative nature of the rhetor’s text – rhetoric tells stories that justify concrete effects. Product is the actual rhetorical text produced, and it can come from any human creative endeavor; i.e., book, speech, film, meme, dance, ad, material product, etc. Presentation encompasses whatever the rhetor does to present the product to the audience and/or get it circulating within physical and/or digital networks. The final element of the alliterative components of rhetoric is performance, and it’s the performance of the audience after having witnessed the presentation of the product. It’s performance that determines the concrete effects of rhetoric. Seems odd the traditional five canons didn’t foreground and emphasize the whole point of rhetoric: audience response to alter reality. The fact that memory (which I ignore) shifted from its traditional association with rhetors to the audience today highlights for me the audience deficiency in the five canons and the desperate need for a new model with direct emphasis on audience. For me, plot, product, presentation, and performance is a viable solution.
Claim 8: Rhetoric amplifies and transforms.
Effective rhetoric amplifies the power of the rhetor and transforms individuals into an audience that will then perform actions to alter reality. Generally speaking, rhetoric is the key to leadership, especially in the military, corporations, or any other hierarchical system.
Claim 9: Rhetoric radiates and remixes.
Once released, rhetoric is not limited to the rhetor’s target audience. It radiates throughout culture(s) producing different effects in different audiences. Skilled rhetors stand ready to remix products from other rhetorical situations to plot new products for presentation to their audiences typically to continue some concrete action, such as funding political candidates and entities. These rhetorical products (texts) and their remixes circulate rapidly; however, their half-life is short (typically a few days) due to the abundance of new digital material produced by commercial entities eager to monopolize human attention online.
Claim 10: Rhetoric is an agnotological apparatus.
My final claim is that rhetoric is an agnotological apparatus, and by that I mean the essence of rhetoric that puts an audience to work is based on an ignorance/knowledge binary where rhetors may base their rhetorical situation on ignorance or knowledge and may present a rhetorical product to their audience based on either ignorance or knowledge. Knowledge is based on facts, science, and our best assessment of objective reality. Ignorance has three different types according to Proctor and Schiebinger: native state, lost realm, and strategic ploy (3). Native state is an innocent form of ignorance, the type we’re born with. As we gain new knowledge, our native state ignorance is reduced. Lost realm ignorance comes from our choices of what we decide to learn – it’s a choice to remain ignorant on specific topics as we pursue knowledge of others. Lost realm ignorance also occurs when sources of knowledge are lost; e.g., digital files are corrupt/accidentally deleted or a library is destroyed. The third type is strategic ploy which is active, culturally created ignorance intended to expand/maintain ignorance via doubt, unreasonable fixation on uncertainty or blatant creation and distribution of misinformation. Strategic ploy is the ignorance most often at play in a rhetor’s ignorant rhetorical product where the concrete effect is often to prevent an action. A good example of this when a rhetor proclaims that COVID vaccines alter human RNA – a boldly ignorant statement based on misinformation. This creates an ignorant exigence, which I claim renders the entire rhetorical situation ignorant. The ignorant rhetor via rhetorical text then demands concrete action from the audience: refuse the COVID vaccine. This action benefits neither themselves nor others and will only cause COVID to continue to spread and kill. According to Table 2, this isn’t just ignorant rhetoric, it’s also stupid rhetoric. The tragedy is this ignorance will become a constraint (Bitzer’s term) for this audience that will influence future rhetors in that culture. The agnotological apparatus discussed is presented in Figure 3 where knowledge or ignorance defines the rhetorical situation as well as the rhetorical text. It is, of course, the rhetor who chooses the path of ignorance or knowledge for both.
Conclusion
The purpose of this essay is to gather my fragmented thoughts as I understand rhetoric at this very early stage of my formal training and to explore a model of rhetoric based on a blend of physics, cultural studies, and agnotology. I seem to have found numerous adjectives to modify the term rhetoric, but this just reinforces the fact that rhetoric is a complex field of study. I’ve identified many pieces and characteristics of rhetoric; however, merging them together to create a single model applicable to my digital rhetoric research will be a key part of my future work. It’s important to restate that my work here isn’t moving toward THE definitive model of rhetoric – it’s simply the beginning of a model that works for me and my interdisciplinary thought process. It’ll be one model among many. If rhetoric scholars can accept the obscurity and irreverence of Victor Vitanza, I think there’s room for me and my model, too.
Works Cited
Bitzer, Lloyd. “The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy & Rhetoric, vol. 1, 1968, pp. 1-14.
Booth, Wayne. The Rhetoric of Rhetoric. Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
Cipolla, Carlo. “The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity.” Whole Earth Review, Spring 1987, pp. 2-7. http://gandalf.fee.urv.cat/professors/AntonioQuesada/Curs1920/Cipolla_laws.pdf
Edbauer, Jenny. “Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 35, vol. 35, no. 4, September 2005, pp. 5–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/02773940509391320.
Gries, Laurie E. Still Life with Rhetoric: A New Materialist Approach for Visual Rhetorics. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2015.
Johnson, Nathan. “Rhetoric and the Cold War Politics of Information Science.” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, vol. 68, no. 6, 2017, pp. 1375-1384.
Kennedy, George. “A Hoot in the Dark: The Evolution of General Rhetoric.” Philosophy & Rhetoric, vol. 25, no. 1, 1992, pp. 1-21.
“Newton’s Laws of Motion.” NASA Glenn Research Center, 25 May 2021, https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/beginners-guide-to-aeronautics/newtons-laws-of-motion/
Proctor, Robert, and Londa Schiebinger, editors. Agnotology: The Making & Unmaking of Ignorance. Stanford, 2008.
Rickert, Thomas. “Preliminary Steps Towards a General Rhetoric.” The Routledge Handbook of Comparative World Rhetorics, edited by Keith Lloyd, Routledge, 2021, pp. 414-421.
Ruiz, Iris. “Critiquing the Critical: The Politics of Race and Coloniality in Rhetoric, Composition, and Writing Studies Research Traditions.” Race, Rhetoric, and Research Methods, edited by Alexandria Lockett, Iris Ruiz, James Sanchez, and Christopher Carter, University Press of Colorado, 2021, pp. 39-79.
Skinnel, Ryan. “Bad People Speaking Effectively in the History of Rhetoric.” Octalog IV: The Politics of Rhetorical Studies in 2021. Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Convention, April 7-10, 2021.
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