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Introducing Rhetoricoviolence

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Violent Subjects and Rhetorical Cartography in the Age of the Terror Wars

Part of the book series: Rhetoric, Politics and Society ((RPS))

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Abstract

The chapter offers a disciplinary history of rhetorical studies and its relationship to the concept of violence. With an eye toward its main object area, the current conjuncture of the terror wars, it further introduces a concept Hayes terms “rhetoricoviolence.” This rhetorical form is initiated as a way to use the lens of rhetorical analysis to examine moments when rhetoric and violence travel together, inextricably linked. Rhetoricoviolence is demarcated by three characteristics: (1) moments and techniques that include violence;(2) moments and techniques that include a prefigured approach to audience reception of the violence; and (3) moments that may be understood as either constituted violence of institutions (for example, the state) or constituent violence of resistive subjects (for example, the people). The chapter advocates for rhetoricoviolence to be activated in cases where rhetorical circulation facilitates new understanding of the rhetorical situation and/or when new subject positions are generated or limited.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Osama Bin Laden, “Message of April 15, 2004,” in Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden, ed. Bruce Lawrence (London: Verso, 2005), 235.

  2. 2.

    Faisal Devji, The Terrorist in Search of Humanity: Militant Islam and Global Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 1-3.

  3. 3.

    Devji, The Terrorist in Search of Humanity, 1-3.

  4. 4.

    Devji, The Terrorist in Search of Humanity, 2.

  5. 5.

    “Clinton Sharpens Attacks on Obama,” CNN.com, last modified February 14, 2008, http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/14/clinton.obama/index.html?iref=topnews.

  6. 6.

    Plato, Gorgias (London: Penguin Classic Books), 15-19, 454e-457c.

  7. 7.

    Kenneth Burke, Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1966), 16.

  8. 8.

    Michael McGee, “A Materialist’s Conception of Rhetoric,” in Raymie E. McKerrow, ed. Explorations in Rhetoric: Studies in Honor of Douglas Ehninger (Glenview, IL: Pearson Scott Foresman, 1982), 25.

  9. 9.

    Dana L. Cloud and Joshua Gunn, “Introduction: W(h)ither Ideology?,” Western Journal of Communication 75, no. 4 (July-September 2011), 410.

  10. 10.

    Richard Jackson. Writing the War on Terrorism: Language, Politics, and Counter-Terrorism (Manchester, United Kingdom: Manchester University Press, 2005), 1. Distributed in the United States by New York: Palgrave.

  11. 11.

    The distinction between constituent and constituted modes of power and violence comes largely from thst discussion in Antonio Negri, Insurgencies: Constituent Power and the Modern State (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999). The distinction between constituent and constituted modes of power and violence comes largely from thst discussion in Antonio Negri, Insurgencies: Constituent Power and the Modern State (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).

  12. 12.

    Benjamin Lee & Edward LiPuma, “Cultures of Circulation: The Imagination of Modernity,” Public Culture 14, no. 1 (2002), 192.

  13. 13.

    Donald C. Bryant, “Rhetoric: Its Functions and Scope,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 39, no. 4 (December 1953), 405.

  14. 14.

    One article that deals with an extension of the cases in which rhetoric can be identified as material comes from Ronald Walter Greene, “Another Materialist Rhetoric,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 15, no. 1 (March 1998), 21-41.

  15. 15.

    Leland M. Griffin, “The Rhetoric of Historical Movements,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 38, no. 2 (April 1952), 184.

  16. 16.

    Franklyn S. Haiman, “Rhetoric of the Streets: Some Legal and Ethical Considerations,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 53, no. 2 (April 1967), 112.

  17. 17.

    Dean C. Barnlund and Franklyn S. Haiman, The Dynamics of Discussion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), 12.

  18. 18.

    Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1965), 30.

  19. 19.

    Robert L. Scott and Donald K. Smith, “The Rhetoric of Confrontation,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 55, no. 1 (February 1969), 7.

  20. 20.

    James R. Andrews, “Confrontation at Columbia: A Case Study of Coercive Rhetoric,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 55, no. 1 (1969), 10.

  21. 21.

    Andrews, “Confrontation at Columbia,” 15-16.

  22. 22.

    Robert S. Cathcart, “Movements: Confrontation as Rhetorical Form,” Southern Speech Communication Journal 43, no. 3 (Spring 1978), 224.

  23. 23.

    Wayne Brockriede, “Arguers as Lovers,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 5, no. 1 (Winter 1972), 2.

  24. 24.

    Brockriede, “Arguers as Lovers,” 2-3.

  25. 25.

    Ibid. 2-3.

  26. 26.

    Sally Miller Gearhart, “The Womanization of Rhetoric,” Women’s Studies International Quarterly 2, no. 2 (1979), 195.

  27. 27.

    Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin, “Beyond Persuasion: A Proposal for an Invitational Rhetoric,” Communication Monographs 62, no. 1 (March 1995),2-18.

  28. 28.

    Foss and Griffin, “Beyond Persuasion,” 2.

  29. 29.

    Gearhart, “The Womanization of Rhetoric,” 195.

  30. 30.

    Ibid., 195.

  31. 31.

    Ibid., 201.

  32. 32.

    Foss and Griffin, “Invitational Rhetoric,” 5.

  33. 33.

    Nina M. Lozano-Reich and Dana L. Cloud, “The Uncivil Tongue: Invitational Rhetoric and the Problem of Inequality,” Western Journal of Communication 73, no. 2 (April-June 2009), 220.

  34. 34.

    Though, it should be noted that rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke was significantly influenced by Sigmund Freud’s work.

  35. 35.

    A book-length treatment of Lacan’s value for rhetorical and communication studies has been published by Christian Lundberg, Lacan in Public: Psychoanalysis and the Science of Rhetoric (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2012).

  36. 36.

    Joshua G. Gunn, “For the Love of Rhetoric, With Continual References to Kenny and Dolly,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 94, no. 2 (May 2008), 149.

  37. 37.

    Gunn, “For the Love of Rhetoric,” 147.

  38. 38.

    Ibid., 150.

  39. 39.

    Robert L. Ivie, “The Metaphor of Force in Prowar Discourse: The Case of 1812,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 68, no. 3 (1982), 240-253.

  40. 40.

    Glen McClish, “William G. Allen’s ‘Orators and Oratory’: Inventional Amalgamation, Pathos, and the Characterization of Violence in African American Abolitionist Rhetoric,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 35, no. 1 (Winter 2005), 47-72.

  41. 41.

    Ellen W. Gorsevski and Michael L. Butterworth, “Muhammad Ali’s Fighting Words: The Paradox of Violence in Nonviolent Rhetoric,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 97, no. 1 (February 2011), 50-73.

  42. 42.

    William O. Beeman, The “Great Satan” Versus the “Mad Mullahs”: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 35.

  43. 43.

    Beeman, The “Great Satan” Versus the “Mad Mullahs, 36.

  44. 44.

    Scott A. Bonn, Mass Deception: Moral Panic and the U.S. War on Iraq (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010), 17.

  45. 45.

    Bonn, Mass Deception, 24.

  46. 46.

    J.W. Koch, “Political Rhetoric and Political Persuasion: The Changing Structure of Citizens’ Preferences on Health Insurance during Policy Debate,” Public Opinion Quarterly 62, no. 2 (1998), 209-229.

  47. 47.

    Patrick Tucker, “The Military Wants to Teach Robots Right from Wrong,” The Atlantic: Technology, May 14, 2014, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/the- military-wants-to-teach-robots-right-from-wrong/370855/.

  48. 48.

    Paul Scharre, “Robotics on the Battlefield, Part II: The Coming Swarm,” Center for a New American Security, October 2014, 6. Accessible at http://www.cnas.org/sites/default/files/publications-pdf/CNAS_TheComingSwarm_Scharre.pdf.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Rhetoric Studies, Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington, USA

    Heather Ashley Hayes

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  1. Heather Ashley Hayes
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© 2016 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)

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Hayes, H.A. (2016). Introducing Rhetoricoviolence. In: Violent Subjects and Rhetorical Cartography in the Age of the Terror Wars. Rhetoric, Politics and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48099-6_1

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