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Kairos #5

In the near future, I don’t see much changing with regards to Douthat’s article—where growth is stagnant and new policies are watered down to appease companies with controlling interest in politics until they are ineffectual and full of loop-holes. In this “kludgeocracy” even complete demagogues like Trump can barely initiate change besides creating a narrative around himself that attracts loyalty to him as a person rather than the political party he represents. If politics flip flop from party to party every 4-8 years it stands to reason that the president to follow Trump will be a Democrat. Democrats have become very moderate and ineffectual in their own right—seen by the resurgence of Biden to viable Democratic nomination status after the presidential primary when he experienced considerable losses in the caucuses. I don’t see him as being a highly effective president and thus the cycle continues indefinitely.

In the distant future, at least after Trump and whoever replaces him, I see the entire system being turned on its head. We got a slight glimpse with the current president of what true demagoguery looks like but I would argue that it is going to get a lot worse. It could happen in either party but I think the Republican party already got a taste of rallying behind a leader like this and so they will be more apt to ignore the signs of a dictatorial leader. As Watt’s mentioned in his article, people believe their gut instincts and sources they trust more than an expert’s evaluation of all the data available. We are collecting so much data on people—four to five thousand data points on each person in America according to the Cambridge Analytica CEO—and that data is being used to influence every part of our lives. Even so, we insist we are autonomous individuals. We take well to this manipulation. I think we have only brushed the tip of the iceberg as to what this data can influence. 

In Kairos 3 we talked about the idea of epistemic uncertainty in political crisis and how this can benefit candidates who take advantage of this lack of knowledge and use it to further their goals. I think in both the near and distant future we will see candidates capitalizing on all this uncertainty and positioning themselves as strong, decisive leaders that will initially give people comfort but later will be revealed to be dictatorial in their leadership. I can see there being comfort in dictatorship if you are a person who has bought into the ideas of this leader as everything is absolute and final, allowing no room for uncertainty or quandary. When Trump was elected we got our first sense of this kind of leadership, it has since lulled us with its expected lack of complete effectiveness, and will eventually cause us to ignore the gathering forces of truly dangerous demagoguery. 

Reading Response 03/03

Texts: Donna J. Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto

This text interested me because I found many parallels to the Watts article on zombies. Haraway says that cyborg writing is about the power to survive, not on the basis of original innocence, but on the basis of seizing the tools to mark the world that marked them as other. They do this by retelling origin stories, subverting command and control, hierarchical dualisms of identity and phallocentric narratives, essentially recoding communication. This immediately brought to mind the example Watts used of the Haitian zombie story that “trafficked in tropes of strange black powers about which there were ongoing public debates and fantasies making sense of a volatile racial order”. This story captured the white Western imagination as it implied an impending challenge to the mastery of whites and an advantage by those able to use their origin stories to highlight their “otherness” but in a way that gave them the power and incited fear in the threatened, whether by intention or not. This was a seizure of the tools with which to mark the world, as Haraway mentions. 

To go back to The Cyborg Manifesto, I liked the last sentence where Haraway states that she would rather be a cyborg than a goddess. Goddess implies innocence, motherliness, and powerlessness whereas a cyborg body is not innocent. It does not seek unitary identity. It is multifaceted and in communication with all its parts. With this distinction women are able to rewrite the texts associated with their bodies and and societies. They can transcend the typical “women’s place” in the integrated circuit and instead “place” themselves in a network that acknowledges geometries of difference and contradiction that is incredibly important to the cyborg identity. It takes us away from being feminized and all the extreme vulnerability of “leading an existence that always borders on being obscene, out of place, and reducible to sex”.

Reading Response 02/27

Texts: Casey Boyle, Practicing Rhetorical Theory, Rhetoric as a Posthuman Practice (2018) 

While I was in an Imaging class in the EDP program, we had to create a digital art rendering of an issue facing our modern society such as climate change, fossil fuels, war, famine–really wide open, subject-wise. We then took this image and glitched it multiple times using TextEditor to skew the code. It was a fun project that was used to accompany a research paper each of us wrote on the image subject. Most of the scenes we created initially were vibrant, beautiful, and recognizable. After glitching they lost some of this recognizability and became confused in their depictions. This glitching allowed us to be more critical of our subject. We are easily lulled by images we understand but by taking away this obviousness we were able to reflect deeper on the issues we are facing. We are more mindful of the in-betweens, as Boyle says. We begin to practice dissoi logoi and the ontological exercises associated with it. We reveal the background and begin to see the technological workings of a practice. This allows for higher critical engagement. 

Beyond just seeing the foreground and background we must also allow for even more points of view. They are a start but they still limit us to what we can understand through seeing. We cannot grasp a subject fully until we can employ metastable oscillation.This allows the subject to exist in multiple positions and frameworks. It is important that an individual persists as both themselves but also a part of a metastable abundance of incompatible and unresolved potentials. By allowing for this we help inform possible new rhetorical practices. 

Kairos #4

Watts was talking about Gingrich and Gove when he said that they are agents exercising fear and anxiety for political gain and they are inventing and deploying a mode of discourse that energizes the intense affective economies of their people, the people for whom they are the trusted sources. Research has shown that most people believe what their gut instinct and the sources they trust tell them (in this case Gingrich and Gove), rather than getting an expert’s evaluation of all the data available. When the sources people trust are actively generating fear and anxiety, this becomes a problem. Watt’s mentions that there is a historical downturn throughout history of people’s trust in authority being eroded slowly and consistently. People don’t trust most authority and the ones they do trust are actively spreading misinformation and false data in a post-truth discourse. 

The CEO of Cambridge Analytica said that these fears can be manipulated. Using the data they collected they can target open, highly neurotic people with ads that exploit those fears into purchases or votes. Donald Trump ran on a platform of fear–of us vs them, of otherness. Those others are threatening our way of life. America is no longer great because of this and now it needs to return to its former glory. This is a post-truth discourse. Was America ever great? What are we using to define great?   

In the excerpt that I watched of the Nevada debates for this assignment, the moderator asked about troops stationed in the Middle East. Michael Bloomberg immediately launched into a spiel about 9/11 and how we do not want terrorists congregating in places where the USA cannot keep an eye on them. Obviously he is from New York so this is relevant to his constituents there but something about the way he phrased it sounded like he was pandering to this fear. The most recent domestic terrorist attacks have been committed by American white men and to imply that troops must be kept in the Middle East for fear of another 9/11 felt like he was perpetuating this fear of the “other”, outside forces hellbent on ruining America. 

Watts concludes that zombies are popular because they allow us to give into a perverse pleasure to treat them with guiltless violence and blow their heads off at any time. People treat zombies the way they would treat people they fear and hate if there were no consequences to this behavior. When it comes to African Americans in the past there really were no consequences. They were firmly the “other” people had been allowed to treat as less than human. While racial politics have maybe improved slightly over the years, I still believe this antagonizing, exclusive rhetoric is extremely dangerous. By separating people by differences, there becomes a space to treat them as less than human, resulting in sanctioned violence that is excused because of their otherness. 

People are being told what to fear by politicians. We are being told what to fear based off of data collected about our interests and personality traits. Politicians on both sides of the aisle are creating false narratives about threats America faces to further their own careers. This post truth climate is one that feeds off the uncertainty we all feel about our society, climate change , the economy, etc and allows us to point fingers at people other than ourselves. We’re scared but it is because of some other that threatens what we have. 

Reading Response 02/18

Texts: Stephanie Slaughter, #TrumpEffects: Creating Rhetorical Spaces for Latinx Political Engagement (2017) Gloria Anzaldua, from Borderlands

Stephanie Slaughter mentions clicktivism/slacktivism which is something we have discussed in previous readings for this class. Her take is that civil participation is not limited to the polls anymore, even if these new forms of civic participation may impact voter turnout. Even beyond directly affecting change in that way she asks us to not ignore the way social media facilitates spreading strategies of effective response and ways to intervene in civic discourse that do not “exclusively require official citizenship to participate”. Social media is a way for the Latinx community to refute and publicly condemn hateful and racist rhetoric being disseminated by our current politicians. This is a powerful tool and one that can change the dialogue around an issue or idea. That kind of false rhetoric cannot go unchallenged and we have seen a lot of good come from different stories and campaigns that took place over social media, challenging these stereotypes and outrageous claims.

Although this counterstance cannot last forever, argues Gloria Anzaldua in Borderlands. It is not enough to stand on the opposite river bank, shouting questions, challenging patriarchal, white conventions, she says. It locks one into a duel–oppressor vs oppressed–and both are reduced to the common denominator of violence time and time again. The cycle must be broken. The conversation cannot be entertained. One must leave the river bank and resolve differences or abandon the dominant culture and “write it off altogether as a lost cause”. The difference is to act and not react. With that in mind, I think the campaigns mentioned by Stephanie Slaughter were able to do both. They were initially a reaction to words by Trump but then morphed into an action of their own. After the visceral reactions/outrage occurred, there was time for a more profound response, an action instead of a reaction.

Reading Response 02/13

Texts: Lilliana Mason, Uncivil Agreement, Socially Sorted Parties

By making your political affiliations so integral to your identity, you run the risk of becoming intolerant of anyone with opposing views. When our partisan identities perfectly sync with our social identities, political disagreement festers. “The influence of party loyalty is capable of reversing a single person’s well argued issue position without them even realizing it”, was one of the lines in the article that stuck with me. We become one and the same with our parties that we essentially lose the ability to think for ourselves. This scared me as I know that I have judged people pretty harshly based on their political beliefs and the way they differ from mine. I worry I am losing the ability to be open minded and fair to those who don’t believe the same as me. 

I hear a lot about how America is “divided as ever” and politics are tearing people apart. I think they have always been divisive (I’ve only been able to vote in one election so I was not completely tuned in to elections as I am now), it is maybe that our identities are becoming more and more intertwined with our parties that we feel like the sea is parting in a way. When the rhetoric of one party is meant to incite ire and stir controversy, people are either quick to endorse this behavior while others shun it and there is no real in between.

There is a Mexican saying I read in Borderlands by Gloria Anzalda that says, “Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are”. In today’s socially sorted parties this rings true. I might like you as a person but if your politics are the opposite of mine we can’t be friends because it’ll reflect badly on me. It’ll seem like I too endorse those views. I can’t separate the person from politics. 

Is it even possible to separate your identity from your political beliefs? Should we be actively trying to do so?

Reading Response 02/06

Texts: Helene Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa

This article came out swinging, completely took me by surprise. Cixous mentions that in women personal history blends together with the history of all women, as well as national and world history. It is almost as if there is a feminine epistemology to tie this article in with the other readings this week. Being a woman means internalizing knowledge, ideas, concepts, and relationships that are so representative of the female experience that to explain them would be a feat. This idea of a separate epistemology would fall under the French feminist rhetoric which argues for a celebration of differences between the male and female versus a more competetion based stance as is prevalent in Western culture (as we discussed in our meeting on Thursday). I didn’t get the feeling Cixous is “celebrating differences between sexes” in this article per se, but I did understand the idea that women should not necessarily be equal with men as much as they should surpass them. Women has always functioned within the discourse of man and instead should explode this signifier, challenging it and making it hers. She will go from the “within”, “where she so drowsily crouched to overflow at the lips she will cover the foam”. 

I love Cixous urge for women to write. It was so inspiring! By sharing this epistemology, women can create bonds between each other that surpass all former attachments and incentivize change of a magnitude unforeseen. A new history is coming, writes Cixous, one in which surpasses the phallocentric system in which we currently live. I want to do my part. 

Reading Response 02/04

Texts: Shawn Wilson, Research is Ceremony

I really appreciated the tone of this article (or chapter of a book, to be accurate). Shawn Wilson introduced us to the researchers that he worked with to write this book and I loved the way he shared stories versus bios. The whole chapter felt personal. He talked about his uncertainty with relaying Indigenous epistemology when he was so ingrained in it that he didn’t know what should really be explained to the reader so that they do not have to make such cognitive jumps between ideas. Should he spell them out and risk patronizing the reader and their intelligence? It was something I had never seen a researcher grapple with in print and I appreciated the way he described his troubles. 

He specifies the Indigenous epistemology that the concepts or ideas are not as important as the relationships that went into forming them. This epistemology requires loads of context and systems of knowledge that cannot completely be taught. Some of them are so kneaded into the fabric of the Indigenous community that teaching them requires intense objectivity that is almost impossible to accomplish. 

Kairos #3

Epistemic uncertainty in political crisis allows for candidates and/or anyone involved to use this lack of knowledge to form their own narrative as to the events that took place. When actual numbers are delayed and unforeseen circumstances happen in this arena, politicians can choose the story they want to tell and either celebrate as winners or place blame on their competition and/or the caucus organizers. Things happen quickly in politics and not having that certainty of hard numbers at the ready can have large consequences for candidates. They use those figures to garner support and donations and to gauge the stance they should take for the next caucus, in this case New Hampshire. I understand why there is a bit of panic when glitches happen, as we saw happen in Iowa, but what I find interesting is the way the politicians react to this uncertainty—some of it is definitely not pretty!

Pete Buttigieg immediately claimed victory (which as we now know was valid) but that didn’t stop Bernie Sanders from releasing unverified internal data from about 40 percent of precincts showing him leading the caucuses. This competing information made it hard to gauge the truth and left people agreeing with the candidate they favored over looking at the verified numbers (which were not available). In an already divisive election cycle, having candidates from the same party duke it out over winners and losers created more tension based on this epistemic uncertainty than would we would normally encounter. In an election year that is as critical as this, this level of infighting is not a favorable image that the Democratic party should be displaying.

Joe Biden, the former shoe-in for the Democratic presidential candidate did not have great numbers in Iowa. This prompted him to go on the defensive when talking about numbers and he repeatedly questioned the data process whereas those who felt more certain did not seem to challenge the whole procedure.I would argue that this defensive approach made his campaign seem weaker as it made him look like a sore loser and uncertain of his success (which I don’t think donors like to see). 

One of the Politico articles mentioned that the uncertainty in Iowa meant a shorter news cycle as the chaos/uncertainty around the results would hog the spotlight while the actual date released days later would kind of slip under the radar. I found this to be true. Everyone kind of assumed Pete Buttigieg won anyway because he declared victory early and when the results were confirmed it was old news by then. The “audience” had already processed this response and when it was validated it couldn’t hold interest anymore. 

To summarize, I think the epistemic uncertainty surrounding the Iowa caucuses was extremely beneficial for select candidates but severely hindered others (i.e. Joe Biden). I think the more confident responses in the face of uncertainty helped Buttigieg and Sanders whereas the response from other candidates probably did not help their image in the long run. We shall see what the results from New Hampshire indicate and go from there!

Reading Response 01/30:

Texts:

Arabella Lyon, Confucian Silence and Remonstration: A Basis for Deliberation? 

“Exemplary persons would feel shame if their words were better than their deeds.” When I read this I immediately thought about our political leaders and the campaign speeches they give full of promises that they never follow through on. If Western rhetoric is all about persuasion, then they will use any means necessary to convince people to elect them, regardless if they plan on following through on promises. Confucius believed in deeds before speeches saying “…human character is revealed in our worldly acts, not in the articulation of ideas and plans, not in senseless shouting, pontification, or manipulating of others”. I like this point of view and I think it is an exemplary way of thinking but I don’t know how to apply it in a Western, persuasion-heavy setting. Most of what I write in college is to convince people of some viewpoint. I’m leaning towards attending law school and that is completely based on the rhetoric of persuasion. I don’t know how to be a Confucian in a Western world. I like the idea of rejecting persuasion as controlling–something that is accomplished and done–but rather buying into this concept of an open-ended possibility of change in keeping with the harmony of human relationships. It counteracts the main points of deliberative rhetoric and asks one to operate on the plane of human connection and social interaction. 

I also found the part about silence being valued as a tool for building relationships, working through emphasizing the worth of action, the character of the silent one, and the wisdom of not engaging what cannot be changed, to be an interesting concept with regards to silent protests like we saw last week with wecanDUbetter. I think there is extreme power in silence, especially with situations where tense emotions and trauma are present. Since most stories had already been shared on Instagram, the need to tell them out loud was absent. Also, each story is incredibly personal and having to speak about those experiences in person can be retraumatizing. The gravitas of silence in this instance was “ineffable and unnamable” which exceeded what could have been accomplished through speech. 

Kairos #2

Texts: 

Recovering Delivery for Digital Rhetoric

Rhetoric, Technology, and the Virtues

Aristotle argues that individuals find pleasure in giving to others. The beauty and nobility is in the act of giving itself. Utilitarianism is focused on the end result. It is a framework that looks towards achieving the most good for the most amount of people. I do not think the two ethical systems conflict. With regards to social media activism, if making a donation through one click, “slacktivism”, means that you derive pleasure from this act and spurs you on to contribute often and continuously to causes (as there is no proof that slacktivism is a one-time, capricious thing, as talked about on page 112) then wouldn’t it stand to reason that you are doing the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people over time. The pleasure derived from generosity is not an “end” as defined by utilitarianism (that would be the amount of money or time donated and to what organization) but I think it is an “end” for someone on the giving end. It is an emotion or state of being substantial enough to satisfy the giver and perhaps engender more instances of generosity. This end result of pleasure can be extended through continued engagement with the receiving party, as seen with HONY and Brandon Stanton’s donation updates and thank you messages.

With regards to the wecanDUbetter campaign on Instagram, centered around instances of sexual assault on campus, I think the use of narrative has been incredibly effective. Unlike HONY who is appealing to 17 million people, this campaign feels very pointedly targeted at DU and uses very insular language in its narrative to drive this home. The use of storytelling using very DU centric language is what captured my attention. Even before this assignment I closely followed the campaign and the employing of specific DU-words like “FSEM”, “Towers”, names of specific fraternities, local bars, etc is what really impacted me. As a student of DU, this felt too close to home. It could have been me in any one of those situations. As the campaign is targeted towards awareness and action on the part of DU faculty and administration I think this approach is one of the best ways of going about this. It isn’t sexual assault as some vague thing that happens in unmarked apartments to random people. It makes it feel present and all the more troubling. I think this is a success of delivery. In Recovering Delivery for Digital Rhetoric, delivery is considered a persuasive force and it only achieves the desired effect if the emotion is sincere, the facts are compelling, and the argument sound. I think the emotions in these stories are completely sincere and that is why they have been powerful so far. 

I think the decision to post it all on Instagram also makes a statement. Instances of sexual assault are not things I’m assuming DU administration wants publicized as it is damaging to their reputation. Having this plastered all over social media, where anyone can read and react, elicits more of a response than say, publishing these stories in The Clarion or some other insular publication. By reaching a wider audience and garnering more attention, the wecanDUbetter campaign gave itself the largest opportunity to be recognized. 

Tying back to the theme of pleasure through generosity I mentioned in the first paragraph, I don’t think any of these people sharing their stories via wecanDUbetter are deriving pleasure from rehashing these traumatic experiences but they are contributing to a greater cause that could wind up creating change on campus. I think there has to be some “pleasure” (that’s not really the right word, maybe relief?) in knowing that by being brave and generous enough to come forward, that change can happen. And even taking away the “end” (i.e. change in the way DU handles reports of sexual assault) which is decidely utilitarian, the act of telling your story, even anonymously, along with others, validates these emotions and experiences in a way that is beneficial for the giver. Most of those telling their story will not be at DU long enough to see what measures, if any, are put into place and so this contribution is not entirely utilitarian for that individual person even though it could fall under that category for the campaign as a whole. 

As far as wecanDUbetter seeking transactional forgiveness, I think there is some validity to that, but I don’t think that is all they are after. I think the campaign is more forward-thinking than that (at least I hope this is the case). While wecanDUbetter is seeking acknowledgement, expressions of regret, and understanding (the first five of the six conditions) it is also seeking action that focuses on future responses to claims of sexual assault. Rather than simply tormenting through penitence, wecanDUbetter is looking to change the entire system. If DU continues to ignore these reports and just asks for forgiveness every time, I think it’ll defeat the purpose of this whole campaign. By bearing their souls and sharing their experiences, the contributors to wecanDUbetter are not simply after transactional forgiveness, as most of the perpetrators are probably out of DU jurisdiction anyway, but rather after something larger. They are after change, the seek a response to future instances of sexual assault, timely ones, that happen when it actually matters. They are after prevention and education. I don’t think this is a tit-for-tat transaction, but rather a start of something bigger that all started with a few generous people baring their soul on the internet in order to get this ball rolling in the right direction.

Reading Response 01/23

Texts:

Krista Ratcliffe, Rhetoric Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness (2005)

Renea Frey, “Rhetorics of Reflection” JAEPL (2018)

I referenced rhetorical  listening extensively within my Project 1 solution section. I pulled quotes and delved into the practical application of it so with this reflection I wanted to convey a more personal connection I made with the readings. I also wanted to apply their principles to my own life and the way I listen. 

Renea Frey takes the theories of rhetorical listening originated by Krista Ratcliffe and applies them in a classroom setting. In a traditional writing class it is hard to understand a concept that is based on the oral exercise over the written one but it is a useful experiment that can later be used to inform writing. In order to arrive at more ethical, effective arguments as writers we need to step away from the computer and really commit to listening to our subject deeply in order to understand all the nuances of a situation. This is a hard task and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I am not a good listener. It requires a level of being present that I know I have not yet mastered. I find myself snapping back into conversations after a hiatus where I run through everything I have to do that day or I anxiously cut the other person off as I rush to respond to them. It is an area where I could greatly improve and reading these articles (especially Renea Frey) helped me understand how the theory of listening can be applied. By listening deeply, I know I can learn so much information about the people around me that I have glossed over in the past.

Problem Element of Project 1 (rough, extremely rough draft):

I perceive in-crisis rhetoric to be founded on the displacement of knowledge rather than its production (Bernard-Donals, 74). It is concerned with the testimonial, first-hand experience to give it urgency and emotion—dependent on memory rather than knowledge. In-crisis rhetoric and writing contains a wide, palpable distance between what has been witnessed and what is communicated. For this reason I think crisis rhetoric is subjective, more narrowly expressionistic rhetoric as it argues that all writing ought to be “the unique expression of one’s unique experience”. In-crisis rhetoric is more closely aligned to one’s own experience than one of knowledge and a holistic view of events. 

This rhetoric can be misleading as it does not allow for scrutiny of accuracy or authority. As stated in The Rhetoric of Disaster, “How can you possibly assess the authority of the sources you read, and the character of the witnesses who have written them, when you are absolutely shattered by their effect?” The answer is that you cannot. You are left vulnerable and gullible to fallacies of memory and one narrow vantage point of a crisis. Although what you lose in accuracy and fact, you gain in emotional resonance–the intimate stories of survival through crisis that live on longer than the tempered coverage. 

With regards to the Australian wildfires raging through the bush, I believe that while not all of the rhetoric surrounding this crisis fits my definition, I would argue that the most successful fits into these frameworks. By successful, I mean they have the desired effect whether that be raising money, being shared on social media, and raising general awareness. For example, an Australian comedian, Celeste Barber, successfully raised more money than any other effort, totalling around $51.3 million dollars towards firefighting and animal rescue efforts. Other figures in Australia and the US tried similar attempts with varying degrees of success but hers was by far the most effective. I think her out-measured fundraising success had to do with her first hand reporting of the situation. She was on Instagram stories twenty-five times a day, speaking directly to the camera about what they needed in supplies, whose houses were being threatened, and documenting the empty grocery stores as people She wrote long captions about her memories in her mother-in-laws house (which had been partially damaged by the fires) and about how the thick smoke was making it hard for her children to breathe while they slept at night. Between this testimony and the narration of events, one felt a personal connection to the crisis and felt compelled to contribute. 

While charitable giving to a country in crisis is not a problem per se, it becomes a vehicle for divisive rhetoric when pitched as an us versus them scenario. The story has become that the overall political response to the fires has been lacking while the “regular” people work tirelessly to provide their own aid and save their homes. The Australian Prime Minister has been largely criticised for his response to the fires–he even went on a vacation to Hawaii in the midst of the crisis. This personal fight versus political indifference is a problem that should be solved with the concerted efforts to save their continent from a crisis and yet it is not that easy. Having one unified goal would bring people together you would think, but that is not always the case when the gap between personal testimony, knowledge, and political shortcomings becomes so wide in the rhetoric of this disaster. 

Which brings us to our solution. 

Reading Response 01/21

Texts: David Riche, Toward a Theory and Pedagogy of Rhetorical Vulnerability

I found this article to challenge all we have read up until now regarding persuasive rhetoric. Argument is meant to persuade one side to another and through counterarguments a compromise is made. But even this back and forth is not all innocent. In this article I learned that some rhetoricians have argued that rhetoric enacts a kind of coercive violence upon others as it intends to persuade rather than simply communicate. Our disposition as audience to being persuaded means we are vulnerable. Through this vulnerability we open ourselves up to gullibility and susceptibility. This is why trolling and fake news is successful. It is a game of identity deception—not blatantly deceptive but designed to reveal one’s vulnerabilities.  

I am sure I have fallen prey to fake news and trolling by virtue of these modern times. I have exposed my rhetorical vulnerabilities in my reactions to stories I have encountered on the internet. I want to learn how to apply a listening-based approach to how I take in information. I am not entirely sure how to accomplish this in my own day-to-day consumption of news.

Reading Response 01/16

In this excerpt from Aristotle, we are given a breakdown of rhetorical arguments and their appeals. In political speaking, we are usually urged to either do or not to do something. There are 5 common themes in the political speech: ways and means, war and peace, national defense, imports and exports, and legislation. To talk on these points requires a detailed knowledge about one’s own country but also other countries with which to compare. It is also necessary to have a broad understanding of the different forms of constitution—what internal developments will push it too far or not far enough causing democracy to lose its vigour leading to demagoguery. 

Democracy is all about having to listen, and compromise, and it’s all about being wrong (and admitting it), states Patricial Roberts-Miller. A democracy is not functional without argument and disagreement, conflict and resolution. In that regard, demagoguery seems like the easier choice–you can sit back and let one man take care of everything. This requires no democratic deliberation. We don’t have to think about the future, about the long-term effectiveness of these rash decisions. It is simply us versus them, good versus evil and seems deceptively simple. This is the internal developments Aristotle was referring to that lead to a break down of democracy. It is on us to not be lazy but be consistently on alert for the signs of demagoguery such as ad misericordiam, ad verecundiam, scare tactics, fallacies of relevance, ad hominem, misuse of statistics, circular reasoning, and appealing to inconsistent premises. Only this way can we stop being naive realists and actually be aware of the beginnings of demagoguery.

Reading Response 01/14

Texts:

Cicero, link here: De Re Publica (Book 1 only)

Tapia, Rhetoric and Centers of Power (excerpt: Cicero’s Rome (pg 73-101)

Michael Bernard-Donals, “The Rhetoric of Disaster and the Imperative of Writing,” RSQ (2001)

In Rhetoric and Centers of Power, Cicero seems to be creating the core syllabus that teachers and instructors should refer to when teaching rhetoric. Cicero’s rhetorical views regarding controversy and controversial issues should be broken down and their points discussed by asking several questions. The first, did it or did it not happen? Secondly, define the nature of the act through the definition of terms, Third, the nature of the character of the act. Finally, define the legal parameters in which the case ought to be treated. Beyond this, even more factors regarding the general reasoning and common sense laws and statutes must also be weighed. Some can be treated as legality–with a clear right and wrong verdict. The other must be treated with equity, argued purely on extraneous circumstances. In addition to having met all these points, the orator must know how to arrange their argument and know the techniques of effective style. Without effective style and delivery, the most knowledgeable speaker cannot be successful.

Why is the success of the delivery so important? I’m not sure I grasped the Republic of Cicero in its entirety but I understood that Cicero was saying that government office should not be held by those who are the most powerful and wealthy but by those who can take a controversy and break it down into its component parts. In other words, wise and prudent men. When public affairs are meddled with by men worthy of no confidence, with whom it is disgraceful to associate, to contend against whom is a miserable and dangerous effort, especially when the multitude is excited but it must be done by noble minded men who can deliver their arguments successfully and turn the tide of the masses. In part 15, Cicero tells the story of his father who was an army lieutenant (or his father’s acquaintance? It is unclear) who managed to quell the religious fears of an army produced by the sudden presence of a lunar eclipse. Using his exceptional delivery abilities, he explained the science of the phenomenon and calmed the camp down. He was not particularly educated or esteemed but through his breakdown and knowledge of the situation, he was able to manage and lead his army successfully. 

The Rhetoric of Disaster article was centered around writing but included tie-ins to the articles on Cicero that we read. In the article, Bernard-Donals says that “we do not establish truth through discourse as much as we produce arguments for a certain view of it, no matter how strong and no matter the integrity of the speaker, will settle a matter once and for all”. In other words, even if the speaker is established as a wise and prudent man (to quote Cicero), their argument might produce a contingent truth that is not above being challenged. To this end, rhetoric cannot be viewed through one conversation and one argument. Even testimony is only one argument, one viewpoint of an event or a disaster. Bernard-Donals argues that testimonies are still successful in their ability to elicit emotions that are real, even if the events themselves are not a true recollection of what happened. Even if he did not know the exact science behind the lunar eclipse, the army lieutenant was able to act as a successful rhetor because he was able to create a sense of security in his army through his words and his credibility to his men. 

Beyond its connection to the other articles, The Rhetoric of Disaster and the Imperative of Writing makes some interesting observations regarding the testimonial writing on disaster events. It does not help in the accrual of knowledge about an event but rather allows us insight into its effects on the human psyche. This has its own benefits as long as we do not imply that these writings are historically and factually accurate. The effects of these writings can be completely shattering and this makes it hard to gauge their accuracy when one is completely clouded by the emotion elicited by these works. I felt this way when I read Eli Weisel’s book titles “Night”. I was totally and completely devastated by what I read, there is no way I would’ve been able to be objective about the author himself. If I were to write about a modern day disaster, such as the Australian wildfires, they would be skewed by my beliefs regarding climate change yet if I wrote it in a compelling enough way it could have the desired emotional pull on the reader without acknowledging my authority (or lack of) on the subject. 

Kairos #1

The US/Iran standoff can best be described using epistemic rhetoric. In the epistemic, all reality, all knowledge, is a linguistic construct. Language forms our conceptions of our selves, our audiences, and the very reality in which we exist. Through the language used by both President Trump and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in their Twitter responses, varying realities were formed. In one reality, the US was unharmed and unphased by the launch of two Iranian missiles. In another, a mighty blow to the US military personnel stationed in Iraq rightfully avenged the death of a prominent Iranian general. Neither realities are factual and/or tell the whole story but each served their intended purpose of giving each leader the upper hand in their respective countries. 

Language embodies and generates knowledge. By using the language they did, each leader generated a knowledge of the events that took place and passed that on to the public. “All is well!” and “Our military is the best!”  became the knowledge surrounding the event here in the US, allowing speculation to rest as to whether this would turn into a war (at least for the time being). In Iran, the knowledge conferred through language implied that measures taken (that were sanctioned by international law) resulted in the death of many Americans and concluded their retaliation efforts. This reshaping of events to fit their goals was only effective because of who was doing the shaping. Meaning comes about as the external world, the conceptions the writer or speaker brings to the external world, and the audience the writer or speaker is addressing all simultaneously act on each other during the process of communicating. Trump’s tweets read as a conciliatory gesture to the American public because we were the ones worried and anxious about the rhetoric being spewed regarding retaliation and total destruction of 52 sites in Iran. They were only conciliatory because Trump is the current president of the United States and has the power to enact these threats. If I tweeted the same response, no one would care because it would carry no actual meaning. The meaning of these events therefore only carried weight because of who was doing the communicating.  

In addressing the solution to the crisis, I would look towards classical rhetoric. In matters of utmost political importance, self-expression and finding a unique voice are not really matters of concern. When conflict can commence because of words shared over Twitter, it is perhaps prudent to use a more measured approach. Classical rhetoric places emphasis on the rational and in times like this, it would be wise to abandon the emotional and instead focus on a measured response that takes into consideration a wider range of responses.

Reading Response 01.07

Texts:

Singal, Jesse. “The New Science of How to Argue-Constructively.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 10 Apr. 2019, http://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/erisology-the-science-of-arguing-about-everything/586534/.

Garber, M. (2020). The Right Way to Share Opinions on the Internet. [online] The Atlantic. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/04/the-argument-economy/390420/.

I am convinced, in all my days spent on the internet, passively watching people fight in the social media comments of huge accounts, that I have never seen someone change their opinion on a subject. I have never witnessed an about-face based on a factual argument. Either they simply log off or they end with an abrupt insult aimed at their opponent. If even traditional journalism is falling prey to this disease of the “piping hot take” in their reporting, then it stands to reason that the regular internet user–armed with their strongly formed opinions, lack of factual knowledge, goaded on by clickbait headlines–feels they have the permission to add their voice to the cacophony.

I think Singal makes several valid points regarding the benefit of studying erisology, particularly the ways it could offer us insights on what makes some people more emotionally volatile during arguments–high decouplers versus low decouplers. There is an overabundance of material to work with, especially during the years of major elections. Can erisology take us even deeper? I want to know more about what reward system is wrapped up in this world of the nasty online exchange. Are people so lonely that they initiate these types of interactions to fill a void or to simply feel like they are involved? Argument is not a new phenomena, as the article states, but it seems edgier, vitriolic, and public.

Stories are being published that offers a take that values ideas over facts in the name of content or to stay current with the trending topics of the day. These are then read by people who form their own opinions regarding these ideas. These ideas then influence what they believe to be the truth regarding a situation and from there can be argued about with forceful indignation. This breadcrumb trail leads to opinion after opinion, barely interacting with fact as it takes on a life of its own. There is a lot of discussion regarding fake news, and while that is undoubtedly a huge concern, maybe we should be leery of the news that seems to be coming from a trusted source. We should be analyzing whether each story is a “hot take” rather than based on factual information.