Term
Gorgias
Group Think
Born in Leontini, just outside of Syracuse in Sicily |
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Definition
?: Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen is what kind of speech?
-Epideictic
Problem: We can’t know Truth (especially about Helen of Troy)
Cause: Misperception about persuasion
Solution: Speech is all-powerful, like a drug |
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Term
Bernays “Father of Public Relations”
Group Think
(1891-1995) |
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Definition
?: Edward Bernays thought the public was rational and capable of making intelligent choices:
-False
Problem: How can we use communication as propaganda to change public opinion?
Cause: The public is stuck in old ideas
Solution: Develop tools for public persuasion |
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Term
Burke "Founder of Modern Communication Analysis" (along with Aristotle)
Consubstantiality
(1897-1933) |
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Definition
?: Burke’s consubstantiality:
-Being identified with but not identical to another
Problem: War, the disease of identification
Cause: We fail to understand terministic screens
Solution: The analysis of rhetoric as symbolic action |
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Term
Foss & Griffin
Consubstantiality
“Second wave” feminists and rhetorical scholars |
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Definition
?: Sonja Foss & Cindy Griffin would consider themselves patriarchs:
-False
Problem: Our existing concept of rhetoric is a kind of violence
Cause: Feminist values are not taken into account in our current understanding of rhetoric
Solution: Reconceive of rhetoric as sharing and understanding |
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Term
Debord
Alienation
French theorist
(1931-1994) |
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Definition
?: Guy Debord believes that the spectacle alienates us from our human nature:
-True
Problem: We cannot escape the society of the spectacle
Cause: We fail to understand the power of the spectacle
Solution: There is no solution, the spectacle cannot be escaped |
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Term
Baudrillard “Philosopher of the Matrix”
Alienation
French theorist
(1929-2007) |
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Definition
?: Jean Bauldrillard’s use of the word “simulacrum” is very similar to Socrates’ use of the word “simulacrum”:
-True
Problem: We are vulnerable because we have lost the protections of alienation and the secret
Cause: Ubiquitous information allows us to create our own personal bubble
Solution: Critique, regain the secret, and turn to theory |
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Term
Derrida
Deconstruction
Part of French post-structuralist movement in philosophy
(1940-2001) |
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Definition
?: Deconstruction” asks us to separate:
-What is conditioned from what is natural
Problem: All forms of communication are similarly absent, ambiguous, and deceptive
Cause: A failure to understand the differance
Solution: Recognize the differance, deconstruct |
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Term
Cixous
Deconstruction
French-Algerian feminist playwright, poet, and scholar
(1937-present) |
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Definition
?: Cixous’ rhetorical theory is phallocentric:
-False
Problem: Women do not write
Cause: Men make women hate themselves
Solution: Women should write about what women want to write about |
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Term
Lyotard
Rhetoric as Critical Method
French philosopher
(1926-1998) |
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Definition
?: Lyotard celebrates the arrival of postmodernity:
-False
Problem: Postmodernity is a crisis of narratives, which means the meta-narratives have been delegitimatized
Cause: A number of factors relating to who owns and controls knowledge
Solution: A return to the humanist principle |
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Term
Foucault
Rhetoric as Critical Method
Part of French post-structuralist school of philosophy |
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Definition
?: Michel Foucault was not influenced by Nietzsche:
-False
Problem: What rules and practices govern what is “normal”?
Cause: We do not yet understand the rules of the discursive formation
Solution: Analyze the discursive formation |
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Term
White
Meta-rhetoric
(1928-present) |
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Definition
?: Hayden White’s “meta-historical approach is influenced by Kenneth Burke:
-True
Problem: No one has recognized that history and philosophy bear a strong resemblance to fiction
Cause: We have not yet studied how historians and philosophers “prefigure” their work
Solution: Examine the mode of Emplotment, Formal Argument, Ideological Implication, and the Trope for each theorist |
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Term
De Man
Meta-rhetoric
(1919-1983) |
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Definition
?: Paul de Man’s form of deconstruction is the opposite of Derrida’s:
-True
Problem: We do not understand rhetoric
Cause: We do not understand tropes and figures
Solution: We should analyze tropes and figures as representations of thought |
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Term
Gorgias (1)
What is going on here: |
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Definition
| Like others in the category Group Think, Gorgias is interested primarily in the power of rhetoric. When people talk colloquially about “rhetoric” they are usually thinking of those in the category who view rhetoric as a special form of power or as verbal warfare or as manipulation. While most rhetorical theorists that we will read over the semester do not view rhetoric in this way, it is, nonetheless, a category of thinking about rhetoric. It isn’t the only way to view rhetoric, as we have discussed, but ever since Plato wrote his dialogue against Gorgias and rhetoric, it is the way that most people who do not study rhetoric think about rhetoric. |
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Term
Bernays
What is going on here: |
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Definition
| Bernays, like others in the category Rhetoric as Group Think, offers an incredibly simplistic view of rhetoric: the people are a bunch of dumb cows, rhetoric is powerful and should be used to lead the herd for their own good. Note that his theory of rhetoric isn’t really concerned with truth or with method, but is rather very much concerned with effect—what can we do with rhetoric? His answer is that rhetoric can take make shapes and forms and can harness communication technologies to create mass desire, opinion, and action for specific ideas, products, and people. |
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Term
Burke
What is going on here: |
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Definition
| Burke, like others in the category Consubstantiality, is interested primarily in the purposes of rhetoric: unification and division. He argues that rhetoric provides terministic screen through which identification between people and idea are creates. Because identification is also division, identifications can be used to create both war and peace. |
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Term
Foss & Griffin
What is going on here: |
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Definition
| Foss and Griffin, like others in the category Consubstantiality, are interested primarily in the purposes of rhetoric - what do we think with rhetoric and what does rhetoric do to us? Like Kenneth Burke, Foss and Griffin seek to understand how rhetoric can be used to creation identification. Unlike Burke, however, Foss and Griffin see the kind of persuasion represented by burke as aggressive and patriarchal. Rather than thinking of rhetoric as persuasion, control, or violence, they ask for us to understand rhetoric as invitation to share with no thought of challenging another’s mind, but merely forming communion through language. |
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Term
Debord (1)
What is going on here: |
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Definition
| Debord, like others in the category Alienation, is concerned with the purpose or effect of mass mediated communication (note, he does not use the word “rhetoric,” to describe the spectacle, but it is clear that rhetoric is a part of the spectacle). Debord argued that we could not escape the “spectacle,” or the consumer culture that alienates people from their ideas, human nature, and from other people. |
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Term
Baudrillard
What is going on here: |
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Definition
| Baudrillard, like others in the category Alienation, is interested primarily in the effects of ubiquitous electronic communication and late capitalism on people’s ability to think and act independent from the rest of society. Baudrillard essentially agrees with Debord’s 1967 critique and updates and expands upon it. Unlike Debord, however, Baudrillard seems to provide a solution to the problem of obscenity: critique, regain a space for the secret, and turn to theory. |
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Term
Derrida
What is going on here: |
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Definition
| Derrida, like others in the category Deconstruction, is primarily interested in problematizing word meaning, context, and the relationship between the sign and the signified. Derrida led this form of inquiry and is thus the most prominent theorists of deconstruction. You won’t find the word “rhetoric” in this reading, but you will find that he uses rhetoric to deconstruct the power of language, thought, images, text, etc. Derrida’s idea of deconstruction has affected everything in our culture, including food. |
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Term
Cixous
What is going on here: |
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Definition
| Cixous, like others in the category Deconstruction, is concerned with breaking down language into its constituent parts in order to re-create or re-imagine a new form of communicating or a new social and political order. Whereas Derrida argued that the privileging of the written word (logocentrism) meant that written forms of communication were thought to be more important, Cixous extends Derrida’s critique by arguing that writing privileges the male perspective (phallocentrism) and urging women to write. |
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Term
Lyotard
What is going on here: |
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Definition
| Lyotard, like others in the category Rhetoric as Critical Method, employs a rhetorical perspective to knowledge creation, generation, and dissemination. He is interested primarily in using rhetoric to analyze critically power, knowledge, and systems. This kind of critical perspective characterizes the “rhetorical turn” of postmodernity. Once again, we do not see an overt “theory of rhetoric” in his argument, but rather we find an implied rhetorical theory and we find that a rhetorical perspective enables Lyotard to critique power, knowledge, and systems. |
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Term
Foucault (1)
What is going on here: |
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Definition
Foucault, like others in the category Rhetoric as Critical Method, uses rhetoric as a tool for criticism, which enables him to offer a re-evaluation of our fundamental assumptions about the relationships between language and power.
To understand his work it is important to recognize the specific vocabulary that he uses. |
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Term
White
What is going on here: |
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Definition
| Hayden White, like others in the category Meta-rhetoric, asks us to think about the rhetoric of rhetoric—in his case, the rhetoric of history and philosophy. His main purpose is not to question Truth/truth/or tRUTH or think about the purposes of rhetoric, but to think more carefully about how that historian or theorist views the world and writes about it. |
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Term
De Man
What is going on here: |
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Definition
| Paul de Man, like others in the category Meta-rhetoric, asks us to think about the rhetoric of rhetoric. Specifically, he helps us to understand the deep, structural logic of tropes and figures and how those embedded elements in a text reveal how thought is constructed. (Paralipses…all of the tropes are like that) |
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Term
Gorgias (2)
What is going on here: |
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Definition
About Helen of Troy:
“The beautiful Helen, wife of Menelaus, King of Sparta, was abducted by Paris, a prince of the city of Troy in Asia Minor. To get her back, the Greeks united in a war against troy that destroyed the city. Helen returned to Greece with Menelaus. These events supposedly took place in 1000 BCE. Their retelling in the oral poetry eventually codified in Homer’s Iliad formed a central element in Greek culture.” (44) |
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Term
Debord (2)
What is going on here: |
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Definition
Marxist Terminology:
“Reification”: from the Latin ‘res,’ or ‘thing’ to make a thing out of an idea; to turn people into things and things into people.
Commodification: turning words, labor, people, and time into units of exchange.
Fetishism of commodities: Marx’s term for the practice of seeing the exchange value of a commodity as inherent in the object, rather than deriving from its labor-value (what is it worth, what can I get it for or get for it, rather than what effort did it take to craft it). |
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Term
Foucault (2)
What is going on here: |
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Definition
-Discourse: language laden with power. The “whole” as comprised with the “parts” of statements.
-Normalization: the process by which certain behaviors, ways of thinking, patterns of life are deemed acceptable while others are deemed unacceptable.
-Delimit: the forces (institutions, conveniences, power structures, wealth, etc.) which prohibit different ways of expression, different ways of constituting “normal” from being used.
-Resistance: the forces that resist the normalizing power of delimitation. |
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Term
Debord (3)
What is going on here: |
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Definition
Alienation(a)-the division and separation between the upper class (bourgeosie) and the lower class (proletariat). In recent years, the term has been used to suggest estrangement, powerlessness, and the depersonalization of the individual.
Alienation(b)-refers to the separation of things that naturally belong together, or to antagonism between things that are properly in harmony. In the concept’s most important use, it refers to the alienation of people from aspects of their “human nature.” Marx believes that alienation is a systematic result of capitalism. |
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Term
Foucault (3)
What is going on here: |
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Definition
| His intellectual project is one of exposing those delimiting discourses that have normalized certain behaviors, thoughts, actions as acceptable. His view of criticism is one of empowerment: through the analysis of discourse we liberate people from the constraints of discourse, and hence allow people to make decisions based on their own views of the way things should be rather than on the ways in which things have been constructed for them. He was clearly influenced by Nietzsche, but it might be helpful to think of his project in terms of Aristotle’s enthymeme and Burke’s social construction of reality. |
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Term
Foucault (4)
What is going on here: |
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Definition
Foucault is asking us to question how and why and to what purpose certain things have come to be accepted as part of our shared understanding (Burke) and thus able to persude as though a shorthand (Aristotle). Thus, his project is much more meta than any of the others we have encountered this semester.
General Intellectual Project: Problematization |
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