RSM+Response+1


 * First Response Paper for Minor Exam in Rhetoric of Social Movements:**

I’d like to focus this response by beginning with Bitzer’s Rhetorical Situation and then tracing out the influences and critiques that appear in many of the other articles. Bitzer’s article is a major turning point for studies in the Rhetoric of Social Movements because it diffused the rhetorical focus from the speaker to a multi-faceted situation, including exigence, audience, constraints, orator (speaker), and the discourse itself. While orator, discourse, and audience were often considered core aspects of rhetoric, the exigence and constraints were not featured. Bitzer’s key claim was that “Rhetorical discourse does not create the situation, but rather the situation "calls the discourse into existence" (218) on the justification that rhetoric is “pragmatic; it comes into existence for the sake of something beyond itself,” drawing it’s character from “the circumstances of the historic context in which they occur” (219). However, Bitzer’s focus on the situation suggested for Richard Vatz a lack of agency and a dismissal of the power of rhetoric. Though Bitzer claimed that “The rhetor alters reality by bring into existence a discourse of such a character that the audience, in thought and action, is so engaged that it becomes mediator of change” (219), Vatz critiqued Bitzer’s arguments that these discourses only worked because the situation called for them. Instead, Vatz argues in “The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation” that it is Rhetoric which creates situations, and not the other way around. The idea of a situation which exists before rhetorical discourse is, for Vatz, too Platonic—it suggests a //real// situation which can be known and observed by everyone, regardless of perspective. Rather, Vatz insists that any situation can only be known by the facts //as described// and, thus, //as interpreted//, by individuals through discourses. The facts of the Kennedy assassination are interpreted by the way they are described and understood—as an assassination of great importance in which the country must unite, rather than a death which will only be cause for a smooth transition of power into the hands of a similar politician.

The circuitous path of rhetoric creating situations which then invite new rhetorical discourses, is likewise seen in McGee’s “In Search of ‘The People.’” Though not responding directly to Bitzer, McGee is examining another aspect of the Rhetorical Situation: audience. Bitzer claims that rhetorical discourse, as opposed to scientific or poetic discourses, must have an audience who can listen and enact change. McGee also presumes that rhetorical discourse must have an audience, but suggests that, rather than being a pre-existing People which can accept and act upon the rhetoric or not, it is the rhetoric itself which creates ‘The People,’ who may then choose to act. Thus, rather than a True, pre-existing audience for movement rhetorics, the audience is imagined by the rhetor and created through their invocation. In other words, it is the utterance naming “The People” and their shared beliefs, and the acceptance of that utterance, that causes individuals to form a collective with those shared beliefs. If people believe that a Whig party exists, then one exists //in fact//.

McGee’s claims are also of importance to the rhetorical study of social movements beyond a critique of the rhetorical situation. This idea that “The People” are created through rhetoric suggests the importance of what is often called ‘false consciousness.’ Rather than being a //false// consciousness, McGee’s arguments suggest that consciousness creates the reality. Thus, if the masses believe themselves to be an oppressed group then they become an oppressed group. However, this is not an enlightening from a false to a true consciousness, but simply the shift from one, equally true, consciousness to another. This is, according to McGee, simply a part of the process of the rhetorical creation of movements, a process which inevitably follows the pattern of “coming to be, being, and ceasing to be” (243). Thus, the beliefs of “The People” are historical truths rather than a progression from a false understanding to a more enlightened position. This claim may prove both troubling and freeing to social movements that rely on the idea of ‘raising consciousness’ within the masses.

The two other articles I want to touch on in this response is Fraser’s “Rethinking the Public Sphere” and Herndl and Bauer’s “Speaking Matters: Liberation Theology, Rhetorical Performance, and Social Action.” I will touch on them only briefly as time is running short, and perhaps we can pick them up more closely in our discussion on Monday.

Fraser’s article challenges, in some respects, McGee’s conception of the “The People” being created rhetorically because it suggests that any claim to being a singular people disregards all those who exist outside ‘The Public Sphere,’ the space in which public and political matters can be openly debated. By charging that certain people are excluded from the public sphere, she creates skepticism that any claim to a universal “People” must also be suspect. Rather, Fraser argues that there are multiple spheres in which people speak (and listen—in my opinion very different things), creating overlapping networks of publics and counterpublics. However, I believe that this does not suggest that “The People” does not still operate within certain discourses with a function of being a universal and unified whole, merely that it is not //truly// what it claims to be. The force of a rhetorical ‘unified People’ can still hold a strong persuasive power, as it is often the rhetorical device used to exclude certain people from “The Public Sphere” and to give that public power over other counter-publics.

Herndl and Bauer’s article suggests a method of rhetorical action in which the excluded, the subaltern, may speak (drawing from Spivak’s famous question). They contend that subaltern, silenced groups may speak through the performative practice of disarticulation and rearticulation. Of all the articles that I read, I found Herndle and Bauers spoke to me the most, but now that I try to write about it, I am finding it difficult to do so. I would like to discuss this article more in-depth during our discussion, and will return to it over the weekend, trying to pinpoint what might be causing this difficulty.