A rhetorician at Texas A&M University, I am interested in the complex intersections between art, science, rhetoric, and democracy, particularly as theorized and practiced by the Greek Sophists and the American Pragmatists. I believe it is true that which John Dewey stated after long reflection: "Creation, not acquisition, is the measure of a nation's rank; it is the only road to an enduring place in the admiring memory of mankind." Rhetoric is an act of creation deployed to reveal better versions of ourselves in the midst of uncertainty, crisis, and possibility. Supervisors: John Poulakos Address: Department of Communication
Texas A&M University
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During the rise of fascism in the early twentieth century, American philosopher and educational r... more During the rise of fascism in the early twentieth century, American philosopher and educational reformer John Dewey argued that the greatest threat to democracy was not a political regime or even an aggressive foreign power but rather a set of dispositions or attitudes. Though not fascist in and of themselves, these habits of thought—rugged individualism and ideological nationalism—lay the foundation for fascism. In this study, Nathan Crick uses Dewey’s social thought and philosophy of education to provide insight into and resources for transforming our present-day politics. Through a close reading of Dewey’s political writings and educational theory, Crick elaborates Dewey’s vision of democratic social life and the education required for its foundation. He shows that for Dewey, communication is essential to cultivating sympathy, intelligence, and creativity—habits of thought that form the core of democratic culture. Crick then lays out a broad curriculum of logic, aesthetics, and rhetoric for inculcating these habits in the classroom, arguing that if we are to meet the challenge of fascism, we must teach these new arts as if our civilization depends on it—because in our new age of politics, it does.
Comprehensive and pragmatic, this book presents an experimental model of education that can be applied across the humanities curriculum. It will be of interest to teachers of writing, composition, and rhetoric as well as scholars and students of communication studies, pedagogy, and political theory.
Crick examines the Transcendentalist understanding of how power is constituted in both the self a... more Crick examines the Transcendentalist understanding of how power is constituted in both the self and in society, conceptualizing the relationships among technology, nature, language, and identity; critiquing the ethical responsibilities to oneself, the other, and the state; and defining and ultimately praising the unique role that art, action, persuasion, and ideas have in the transformation of the structure of political culture over historical time. What is offered here is not a comprehensive genealogy of ideas, a series of individual biographies, or an effort at conceptual generalization, but instead an exercise in narrative rhetorical theory and criticism that interprets some of the major specific writings and speeches by men and women associated with the Transcendentalist movement—Sampson Reed, Amos Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, and Frederick Douglass—by placing them within a specific political and social history. Rather than attempting to provide comprehensive overviews of the life and work of each of these individuals, this volume presents close readings of individual texts that bring to life their rhetorical character in reaction to particular exigencies while addressing audiences of a unique moment. This rhetoric of Transcendentalism provides insights into the “keys of power”—that is, the means of persuasion for our modern era—that remain vital tools for individuals seeking to reconcile power and virtue in their struggle to make manifest a higher ideal in the world.
Rhetorical Public Speaking: Civic Engagement in the Digital Age, 3rd Edition offers students an i... more Rhetorical Public Speaking: Civic Engagement in the Digital Age, 3rd Edition offers students an innovative approach to public speaking by employing the rhetorical canon as a means of constructing artful speech in a multi-mediated environment. It provides a foundation to guide students in understanding, constructing, and delivering messages that address matters of public concern. Now in its third edition, the text features contemporary as well as historical examples to highlight key concepts and show how rhetoric works in practice. Each chapter includes speech excerpts, summaries, and exercises for review and retention. Students of public speaking are encouraged to employ their new skills as engaged citizens of society.
In Rhetoric and Power, Nathan Crick dramatizes the history of rhetoric by explaining its origin a... more In Rhetoric and Power, Nathan Crick dramatizes the history of rhetoric by explaining its origin and development in classical Greece beginning the oral displays of Homeric eloquence in a time of kings, following its ascent to power during the age of Pericles and the Sophists, and ending with its transformation into a rational discipline with Aristotle in a time of literacy and empire. Crick advances the thesis that rhetoric is primarily a medium and artistry of power, but that the relationship between rhetoric and power at any point in time is a product of historical conditions, not the least of which is the development and availability of communication media.
Investigating major works by Homer, Heraclitus, Aeschylus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Thucydides, Aristophanes, Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle, Rhetoric and Power tells the story of the rise and fall of classical Greece while simultaneously developing rhetorical theory from the close criticism of particular texts. As a form of rhetorical criticism, this volume offers challenging new readings to canonical works such as Aeschylus's Persians, Gorgias's Helen, Aristophanes's Birds, and Isocrates's Nicocles by reading them as reflections of the political culture of their time.
Through this theoretical inquiry, Crick uses these criticisms to articulate and define a plurality of rhetorical genres and concepts, such as heroic eloquence, tragicomedy, representative publicity, ideology, and the public sphere, and their relationships to different structures and ethics of power, such as monarchy, democracy, aristocracy, and empire. Rhetoric and Power thus provides a foundation for rhetorical history, criticism, and theory that draws on contemporary research to prove again the incredible richness of the classical tradition for contemporary rhetorical scholarship and practice.
Rhetoric is the radical expression of a radical faith. Dewey calls this faith “democratic,” but d... more Rhetoric is the radical expression of a radical faith. Dewey calls this faith “democratic,” but democracy is merely its political manifestation. The faith that makes both rhetoric and democracy radical is faith in the constitutive and communicative power of art unfettered. A truly radical art eschews the easy radicalisms of mass culture that wallow in easy sensation or cheap dogma in order to inoculate a population against the subtleties of life. Such radicalisms, at their best, promise much but deliver little, and at their worst destroy that which long effort has struggled to create and preserve. Radical art, like a radical society, is radical not because it seeks extremes but because it dares to place the burden of hope for the future on the shoulders of an art which is sweeping, visionary, rapturous, disciplined, intelligent, and open. Democracy is radical when it commits itself to the possibility that life can achieve the status of art. Rhetoric is radical when it harnesses the power of the arts to shatter that which shuns and constrains and liberate that which desires to build and grow. Driving both projects is the always fragile faith in the intrinsic worth and potential of shared human experience. Sightless dogmatism, cynical irony, and apathetic ennui come easy in this and any age, for they offer escape from the demands of wisdom, judgment, and beauty. Nothing in the history of philosophy has shown philosophers, as a class, to be any less susceptible to these manifestations of the will to nothingness. Whatever else Dewey contributed to the intellectual traditional of humanism, his greatest achievement was to leave behind a corpus of writing that embodies the virtue of hope. It is, and has always been, the task of the greatest rhetoric to translate idealistic hope into social praxis, to turn visionary word into practical deed. Dewey has provided the hope. It falls to those now living and struggling in a world still wrought by strife, insecurity, and fear to sculpt discourses that dare to lift us toward unknown possibilities in the working faith that human beings have within themselves the capacities to prevail.
John Dewey once wrote: “Of all affairs, communication is the most wonderful.” For him communicati... more John Dewey once wrote: “Of all affairs, communication is the most wonderful.” For him communication is the highest of the “arts of life,” for it is in communication that society is born and nurtured. It is by communication that we discover the possibilities of nature. And it is through communication that we make our shared experience meaningful. It is no wonder, then, that Dewey would conclude The Public and Its Problems with this provocative statement: Democracy “will have its consummation when free social inquiry is indissolubly wedded to the art of full and moving communication.”
Dewey, however, does not adequately explain what he understands by “the art of full and moving communication” and never tells us how “communication” functions in the varied contexts of practical life. Despite, then, his obvious affection for communication, he leaves many questions about it unanswered. For instance, what makes communication possible? In what kind of situations is communication called for and why? How does an inchoate feeling or idea find concrete embodiment in language? What are the connections among language, communication, thought, feeling, and action? Most importantly, what is the process by which one employs the art of communication to influence the beliefs and behaviors of others?
This dissertation addresses these questions by approaching Dewey’s thinking on communication from a distinctly rhetorical perspective. Even though Dewey almost never mentions “rhetoric” in his entire corpus, I argue that it is precisely the absence of the term from his writings that makes a rhetorical reading of his work all the more imperative. Such a reading permits us to understand the practical importance of the “art of communication” in the larger context of his social thought. If, then, the problem with Dewey’s writing on communication is that it often drifts into abstractions, one remedy is take those abstractions and place them into concrete situations, where communication is required to transform some part of the environment through transaction with human thought and action. Because this kind of activity has been the specific domain of rhetoric since the time of the sophists, it is only appropriate to read Dewey’s work through that tradition.
In effect, the goal of this dissertation is to explicate Dewey’s theory of communication in the terms of a rhetorical theory. But insofar as his thought went through three distinct “periods” in his lifetime, beginning with his Idealistic period in 1880, moving into his Experimental period in 1903, and culminating in his Naturalistic period in 1925, Dewey can be said to have had three implicit rhetorical theories. To articulate and explain each of these theories, I trace Dewey’s theoretical development through time and construct, through published works, private correspondence, and biographical material. I show that the first theory envisioned rhetoric as a form of eros that helps us grow towards Absolute self consciousness. The second theory views rhetoric as a form of critical inquiry whose goal is the development of phronēsis, or practical wisdom. The third theory treats rhetoric as a productive technē, or a naturalistic form of art that has the power to transform experience, nature, and society through its transactional character.
By tracing Dewey’s theoretical development and explicating three implicit theories of rhetoric in his writings, this dissertation not only provides a unique perspective on Dewey’s changing views on language, ontology, and social practice, but also demonstrates how each theory can still be effectively used to interpret and guide the art of rhetoric. This kind of work enables us to grasp different facets of this diverse and vibrant art. At the same time, it shows how Dewey’s work remains an important resource for those who wish to promote and sustain a democratic way of life by educating citizens in the art of full and moving communication.
In "Xenophon on Violence," Edited by Aggellos Kapellos (Berlin: DeGruyter), pp. 126-141, 2019
The Anabasis is a rich text because it complicates the simple dichotomy between force and persuas... more The Anabasis is a rich text because it complicates the simple dichotomy between force and persuasion. Xenophon not only shows himself fully prepared to use force to attain his aims when convenient, and often uses rhetoric to justify past acts of violence or to threaten future violence if his expectations of “justice” are not met. Violence, in fact, is present in almost everything Xenophon does or says in some way, although often implicit and subtle. What I wish to explore in this essay, therefore, is how rhetoric and power relate to one another in different rhetorical situations as narrated by Xenophon in the Anabasis. Through this exercise I hope to both reveal the subtlety of Xenophon’s rhetoric and to clarify the overall relationship among rhetoric, violence, and power in rhetorical performance as it continues in the present.
In an epoch marked by the threat of global warming, the
conflicts between science and religion ar... more In an epoch marked by the threat of global warming, the conflicts between science and religion are no longer simply matters that concern only intellectual elites and armchair philosophers; they are in many ways matters that will determine the degree to which we can meet the challenges of our times. John H. Evans’s Morals Not Knowledge represents an important provocation for those committed not only to using scientific method as a resource for making moral judgments but also to creating political alliances with religious constituencies. In this important work, Evans argues that most conflicts between science and religion do not concern a clash between two contradictory ways of knowing, but rather a clash over our moral responsibilities and ultimate values. In my response to his work, I suggest that integrating both John Dewey’s pragmatic understanding of the moral situation and Kenneth Burke’s rhetorical interpretation of motives helps bolster Evans’s cause and provides support for a political movement that aims to bridge the divide between science and religion in the epoch of the Anthropocene.
Francesco Petrarch was a pioneering figure not only in the study of
the humanities, but also in t... more Francesco Petrarch was a pioneering figure not only in the study of the humanities, but also in the defense of the humanities. A prolific writer and avid reader of the classics, particularly of the historians, rhetoricians, and poets, Petrarch cleared the way for humanistic studies in an age dominated by rigid scholasticism. Not surprisingly, then, Petrarch also had to defend himself against attacks from establishment elites who condemned the new studies as useless distractions from the pursuit of knowledge, by which they meant the study of syllogisms. I argue in this essay that Petrarch’s invectives against his detractors offer a unique and communicative defense of the humanities that does not rely on the traditional recourse to civic humanism, a tradition that arose only subsequent to Petrarch. In his understanding of humanism, the value of humanistic studies is found in their capacity to produce a combination of humility and love—humility by expanding the circumference of our experience and exposing the limitations of our knowledge, and love by the capacity to create unity out of division. Furthermore, Petrarch defines the enduring opponent of the humanities as the scholastic ignoramus, a character that endures today.
The next decade will be one of the most decisive periods in human history. We currently face the ... more The next decade will be one of the most decisive periods in human history. We currently face the reality of a coming climate catastrophe brought about by centuries of industrial resource extraction from the planet and the accompanying mass exploitation of its human population, and as a result “we will soon find ourselves confronted by movements of disadvantaged people across borders that dwarfed those of previous eras” (Stanley 192). According to Jason Stanley, these conditions make a situation ripe for the rise of fascism: “Traumatized, impoverished, and in need of aid, refugees, including legal immigrants, will be recast to fit racist stereotypes by leaders and movements committed to maintaining hierarchical group privilege and using fascist politics” (192). The fact that climate change now threatens everyone’s existence simultaneously and demands such thorough reconstruction of virtually every aspect of social life makes it predictable that fascism would spring up across the face of the earth in different guises to resist these imperatives. Rhetoricians today face no more pressing challenge than to diagnose and counter this global movement as part of a larger effort to stave off the barbarism that fascism eagerly unleashes on history. This review essay contributes to this effort by reading four popular books that purport to confront this challenge head-on without reducing fascism to a caricature that gratifies its critics while casting the real issues into shadow.
One of the most outstanding characteristics of the digital age is the ubiquity of the image. Imag... more One of the most outstanding characteristics of the digital age is the ubiquity of the image. Images are not only easily captured, but easily manipulated and distributed for rhetorical effect, as we see in social networking, advertising, political campaigning, or coordinated propaganda. Making classical rhetoric relevant to the digital age thus requires specific attention to its treatment of the image. And this is precisely what we find in one of the earliest extant rhetorical texts of the Sophists—Gorgias’s Encomium of Helen. Although most well-known for its glorification of the power of logos in its capacity as a dynastes megas, it is significant that Gorgias in the Helen gives equal time to eros as a force capable of moving men and women to action men. Notably, eros is not conceptualized as an emotional impulse that arises in the heart, but rather a purely physiological reaction to the sensation of sight. The counterpart of eros is thus not hatred but fear, representing a compulsion to flee. And the source of both love and fear are images—whether they be of painted statues or clashing armor of bronze and iron, respectively. This chapter explicates a sophistical understanding of visual rhetoric and its relationship to logos, a relationship that I believe has become even stronger in the digital age to the degree that the reign of logos as a dynastes megas is now built upon the foundation of the visual image.
Reading Paulo Freire’ s Pedagogy of the oppressed, one might easily conclude that rhetoric has no... more Reading Paulo Freire’ s Pedagogy of the oppressed, one might easily conclude that rhetoric has no place in a classroom so thoroughly imbued with the ethics of dialogue. However, this essay suggests that rhetoric plays a productive and in fact necessary role in Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed. Drawing from the sophistical techniques of imitatio and dissoilogoi, I suggest that true liberation from a dominated consciousness goes through rather than around the methods of rhetorical persuasion, methods that not only develop rhetorical skills in students but that also encourage rhetorical performance on the part of the educators. Dialogue remains central to this pedagogy but becomes enriched by its natural counterpart, rhetoric, so that the aim is not only cognitive liberation but the accrual of practical power.
In order to highlight the genuinely radical nature of John Dewey’s educational and democratic vis... more In order to highlight the genuinely radical nature of John Dewey’s educational and democratic vision this essay articulates a vision of contemporary rhetorical education that is grounded in a pragmatic rereading of Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the “will to power.” Drawing from Dewey’s treatment of the will to power in Human Nature and Conduct, I argue that rhetorical pedagogy seeks to arouse, channel, and finally compose the impulses of students through the activity of intelligence in such a way that reflects and advocates for students’ interests within a democratic ethic of advocacy, criticism, and deliberation.
Peirce famously defined the process of thinking as what a person is " 'saying to himself,' that i... more Peirce famously defined the process of thinking as what a person is " 'saying to himself,' that is, is saying to that other self that is just coming into life in the flow of time. " For Peirce, this meant the essence of thinking is dialogue. This essay proposes a conception of dialogue grounded in Peirce's normative ideal of inquiry that challenges contemporary thinking about dialogue yet supports the same moral and ethical aims. Using a scene from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice that Peirce used as an exemplar of dialogue, we propose a conception that begins in doubt and passes through phases of reasoning and ethical and esthetic judgment before coming to a resolution which expands horizons of thought, emotion, and action.
Review Essay: The Evolving Citizen: American Youth and the Changing Norms of Democratic Engagemen... more Review Essay: The Evolving Citizen: American Youth and the Changing Norms of Democratic Engagement, by Jay P. Childers, After the Public Turn: Composition, Counterpublics, and the Citizen Bricoleur, by Frank Farmer, Prophets, Gurus, Pundits: Rhetorical Styles & Public Engagement, by Anna M. Young, and Letters to Power: Public Advocacy Without Public Intellectuals, by Samuel McCormick.
When Anna White Dildane, a prostitute and heroin addict, was committed to the Laboratory of Socia... more When Anna White Dildane, a prostitute and heroin addict, was committed to the Laboratory of Social Hygiene (LSH) in 1917, she was treated by a staff that anticipated the methods of the biopsychosocial model later developed by Engel. That is to say, the staff members believed that Anna’s rehabilitation was contingent on a scientific diagnosis of the physical, mental, and social factors that underlay her condition. However, using Anna and the LSH as a case study, we draw from Latour to show the limitations of this “modern” method of diagnosis and treatment that persists today. Using Burke, we advocate for a pragmatic orientation focused on creating rhetorically oriented narratives whose aim is to help patients make judgments about their health and future, namely, by bringing about the experience of “form” capable of constituting new types of identification. Effective medical rhetoric thus adopts a method of persuasion that begins with the narrative and self-understanding of the patient, links aspects of that narrative with the technical expertise of physicians and other health care providers, and crafts a new, more specialized narrative attentive to the desires and constraints of a patient’s form of identification that is ultimately the seat of judgment.
In this essay, we look at how three traditional forms of performance identified by Walter Benjami... more In this essay, we look at how three traditional forms of performance identified by Walter Benjamin function in the digital age. With greater accessibility to the means of production, digital performances can be created by just about anyone. The performances we analyze show how Benjamin's conception of the storyteller, the novelist, and the charlatan can thrive in online environments. While the performances of the storyteller and the novelist suggest new possibilities for online performance, the performance of the charlatan demonstrates the danger of not engaging with/in online performance.
Revista Educação e Cultura Contemporânea 12 (28): 164-183, 2015
Com o objetivo de elucidar a natureza genuinamente radical da visão educacional e democrática de ... more Com o objetivo de elucidar a natureza genuinamente radical da visão educacional e democrática de John Dewey, este ensaio articula uma visão da educação retórica contemporânea que se fundamenta em uma releitura do conceito de “vontade de poder”
de Friedrich Nietzsche. Considerando o tratamento dado por Dewey à vontade de poder em Human Nature and Conduct, defendo que a pedagogia retórica busca despertar, canalizar e finalmente compor os impulsos do estudante por meio da atividade da
inteligência, de modo a refletir e defender a escolha individual. O ensaio conclui com a definição de três atribuições chamadas genealogia, previsão e defesa.
The vibrancy and health of political culture in democratic societies increasingly depends on the ... more The vibrancy and health of political culture in democratic societies increasingly depends on the publicity and resolution of public scientific controversies. However, creating a framework for analysis that avoids reductive categorization remains a difficult task. This essay proposes a Habermasian framework of analysis for public scientific controversies and draws out its rhetorical implications. We argue that the roots of public scientific controversies are found in moments of urgency that call forth contested scientific theories into the public realm. These controversies embed epistemological disputes over knowledge-claims within pragmatic contexts, thus forcing interested parties to achieve some level of intersubjective consensus on the legitimacy of broad-based policies that fuse politics, ethics, and science. These controversies thus provide the situational grounds that make possible, if not always actual, the interaction among citizens, scientists, and legislators through rhetorical forums that feature the discursive interplay among epistemological concerns, aesthetic experience, moral valuation, and practical judgment.
During the rise of fascism in the early twentieth century, American philosopher and educational r... more During the rise of fascism in the early twentieth century, American philosopher and educational reformer John Dewey argued that the greatest threat to democracy was not a political regime or even an aggressive foreign power but rather a set of dispositions or attitudes. Though not fascist in and of themselves, these habits of thought—rugged individualism and ideological nationalism—lay the foundation for fascism. In this study, Nathan Crick uses Dewey’s social thought and philosophy of education to provide insight into and resources for transforming our present-day politics. Through a close reading of Dewey’s political writings and educational theory, Crick elaborates Dewey’s vision of democratic social life and the education required for its foundation. He shows that for Dewey, communication is essential to cultivating sympathy, intelligence, and creativity—habits of thought that form the core of democratic culture. Crick then lays out a broad curriculum of logic, aesthetics, and rhetoric for inculcating these habits in the classroom, arguing that if we are to meet the challenge of fascism, we must teach these new arts as if our civilization depends on it—because in our new age of politics, it does.
Comprehensive and pragmatic, this book presents an experimental model of education that can be applied across the humanities curriculum. It will be of interest to teachers of writing, composition, and rhetoric as well as scholars and students of communication studies, pedagogy, and political theory.
Crick examines the Transcendentalist understanding of how power is constituted in both the self a... more Crick examines the Transcendentalist understanding of how power is constituted in both the self and in society, conceptualizing the relationships among technology, nature, language, and identity; critiquing the ethical responsibilities to oneself, the other, and the state; and defining and ultimately praising the unique role that art, action, persuasion, and ideas have in the transformation of the structure of political culture over historical time. What is offered here is not a comprehensive genealogy of ideas, a series of individual biographies, or an effort at conceptual generalization, but instead an exercise in narrative rhetorical theory and criticism that interprets some of the major specific writings and speeches by men and women associated with the Transcendentalist movement—Sampson Reed, Amos Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, and Frederick Douglass—by placing them within a specific political and social history. Rather than attempting to provide comprehensive overviews of the life and work of each of these individuals, this volume presents close readings of individual texts that bring to life their rhetorical character in reaction to particular exigencies while addressing audiences of a unique moment. This rhetoric of Transcendentalism provides insights into the “keys of power”—that is, the means of persuasion for our modern era—that remain vital tools for individuals seeking to reconcile power and virtue in their struggle to make manifest a higher ideal in the world.
Rhetorical Public Speaking: Civic Engagement in the Digital Age, 3rd Edition offers students an i... more Rhetorical Public Speaking: Civic Engagement in the Digital Age, 3rd Edition offers students an innovative approach to public speaking by employing the rhetorical canon as a means of constructing artful speech in a multi-mediated environment. It provides a foundation to guide students in understanding, constructing, and delivering messages that address matters of public concern. Now in its third edition, the text features contemporary as well as historical examples to highlight key concepts and show how rhetoric works in practice. Each chapter includes speech excerpts, summaries, and exercises for review and retention. Students of public speaking are encouraged to employ their new skills as engaged citizens of society.
In Rhetoric and Power, Nathan Crick dramatizes the history of rhetoric by explaining its origin a... more In Rhetoric and Power, Nathan Crick dramatizes the history of rhetoric by explaining its origin and development in classical Greece beginning the oral displays of Homeric eloquence in a time of kings, following its ascent to power during the age of Pericles and the Sophists, and ending with its transformation into a rational discipline with Aristotle in a time of literacy and empire. Crick advances the thesis that rhetoric is primarily a medium and artistry of power, but that the relationship between rhetoric and power at any point in time is a product of historical conditions, not the least of which is the development and availability of communication media.
Investigating major works by Homer, Heraclitus, Aeschylus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Thucydides, Aristophanes, Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle, Rhetoric and Power tells the story of the rise and fall of classical Greece while simultaneously developing rhetorical theory from the close criticism of particular texts. As a form of rhetorical criticism, this volume offers challenging new readings to canonical works such as Aeschylus's Persians, Gorgias's Helen, Aristophanes's Birds, and Isocrates's Nicocles by reading them as reflections of the political culture of their time.
Through this theoretical inquiry, Crick uses these criticisms to articulate and define a plurality of rhetorical genres and concepts, such as heroic eloquence, tragicomedy, representative publicity, ideology, and the public sphere, and their relationships to different structures and ethics of power, such as monarchy, democracy, aristocracy, and empire. Rhetoric and Power thus provides a foundation for rhetorical history, criticism, and theory that draws on contemporary research to prove again the incredible richness of the classical tradition for contemporary rhetorical scholarship and practice.
Rhetoric is the radical expression of a radical faith. Dewey calls this faith “democratic,” but d... more Rhetoric is the radical expression of a radical faith. Dewey calls this faith “democratic,” but democracy is merely its political manifestation. The faith that makes both rhetoric and democracy radical is faith in the constitutive and communicative power of art unfettered. A truly radical art eschews the easy radicalisms of mass culture that wallow in easy sensation or cheap dogma in order to inoculate a population against the subtleties of life. Such radicalisms, at their best, promise much but deliver little, and at their worst destroy that which long effort has struggled to create and preserve. Radical art, like a radical society, is radical not because it seeks extremes but because it dares to place the burden of hope for the future on the shoulders of an art which is sweeping, visionary, rapturous, disciplined, intelligent, and open. Democracy is radical when it commits itself to the possibility that life can achieve the status of art. Rhetoric is radical when it harnesses the power of the arts to shatter that which shuns and constrains and liberate that which desires to build and grow. Driving both projects is the always fragile faith in the intrinsic worth and potential of shared human experience. Sightless dogmatism, cynical irony, and apathetic ennui come easy in this and any age, for they offer escape from the demands of wisdom, judgment, and beauty. Nothing in the history of philosophy has shown philosophers, as a class, to be any less susceptible to these manifestations of the will to nothingness. Whatever else Dewey contributed to the intellectual traditional of humanism, his greatest achievement was to leave behind a corpus of writing that embodies the virtue of hope. It is, and has always been, the task of the greatest rhetoric to translate idealistic hope into social praxis, to turn visionary word into practical deed. Dewey has provided the hope. It falls to those now living and struggling in a world still wrought by strife, insecurity, and fear to sculpt discourses that dare to lift us toward unknown possibilities in the working faith that human beings have within themselves the capacities to prevail.
John Dewey once wrote: “Of all affairs, communication is the most wonderful.” For him communicati... more John Dewey once wrote: “Of all affairs, communication is the most wonderful.” For him communication is the highest of the “arts of life,” for it is in communication that society is born and nurtured. It is by communication that we discover the possibilities of nature. And it is through communication that we make our shared experience meaningful. It is no wonder, then, that Dewey would conclude The Public and Its Problems with this provocative statement: Democracy “will have its consummation when free social inquiry is indissolubly wedded to the art of full and moving communication.”
Dewey, however, does not adequately explain what he understands by “the art of full and moving communication” and never tells us how “communication” functions in the varied contexts of practical life. Despite, then, his obvious affection for communication, he leaves many questions about it unanswered. For instance, what makes communication possible? In what kind of situations is communication called for and why? How does an inchoate feeling or idea find concrete embodiment in language? What are the connections among language, communication, thought, feeling, and action? Most importantly, what is the process by which one employs the art of communication to influence the beliefs and behaviors of others?
This dissertation addresses these questions by approaching Dewey’s thinking on communication from a distinctly rhetorical perspective. Even though Dewey almost never mentions “rhetoric” in his entire corpus, I argue that it is precisely the absence of the term from his writings that makes a rhetorical reading of his work all the more imperative. Such a reading permits us to understand the practical importance of the “art of communication” in the larger context of his social thought. If, then, the problem with Dewey’s writing on communication is that it often drifts into abstractions, one remedy is take those abstractions and place them into concrete situations, where communication is required to transform some part of the environment through transaction with human thought and action. Because this kind of activity has been the specific domain of rhetoric since the time of the sophists, it is only appropriate to read Dewey’s work through that tradition.
In effect, the goal of this dissertation is to explicate Dewey’s theory of communication in the terms of a rhetorical theory. But insofar as his thought went through three distinct “periods” in his lifetime, beginning with his Idealistic period in 1880, moving into his Experimental period in 1903, and culminating in his Naturalistic period in 1925, Dewey can be said to have had three implicit rhetorical theories. To articulate and explain each of these theories, I trace Dewey’s theoretical development through time and construct, through published works, private correspondence, and biographical material. I show that the first theory envisioned rhetoric as a form of eros that helps us grow towards Absolute self consciousness. The second theory views rhetoric as a form of critical inquiry whose goal is the development of phronēsis, or practical wisdom. The third theory treats rhetoric as a productive technē, or a naturalistic form of art that has the power to transform experience, nature, and society through its transactional character.
By tracing Dewey’s theoretical development and explicating three implicit theories of rhetoric in his writings, this dissertation not only provides a unique perspective on Dewey’s changing views on language, ontology, and social practice, but also demonstrates how each theory can still be effectively used to interpret and guide the art of rhetoric. This kind of work enables us to grasp different facets of this diverse and vibrant art. At the same time, it shows how Dewey’s work remains an important resource for those who wish to promote and sustain a democratic way of life by educating citizens in the art of full and moving communication.
In "Xenophon on Violence," Edited by Aggellos Kapellos (Berlin: DeGruyter), pp. 126-141, 2019
The Anabasis is a rich text because it complicates the simple dichotomy between force and persuas... more The Anabasis is a rich text because it complicates the simple dichotomy between force and persuasion. Xenophon not only shows himself fully prepared to use force to attain his aims when convenient, and often uses rhetoric to justify past acts of violence or to threaten future violence if his expectations of “justice” are not met. Violence, in fact, is present in almost everything Xenophon does or says in some way, although often implicit and subtle. What I wish to explore in this essay, therefore, is how rhetoric and power relate to one another in different rhetorical situations as narrated by Xenophon in the Anabasis. Through this exercise I hope to both reveal the subtlety of Xenophon’s rhetoric and to clarify the overall relationship among rhetoric, violence, and power in rhetorical performance as it continues in the present.
In an epoch marked by the threat of global warming, the
conflicts between science and religion ar... more In an epoch marked by the threat of global warming, the conflicts between science and religion are no longer simply matters that concern only intellectual elites and armchair philosophers; they are in many ways matters that will determine the degree to which we can meet the challenges of our times. John H. Evans’s Morals Not Knowledge represents an important provocation for those committed not only to using scientific method as a resource for making moral judgments but also to creating political alliances with religious constituencies. In this important work, Evans argues that most conflicts between science and religion do not concern a clash between two contradictory ways of knowing, but rather a clash over our moral responsibilities and ultimate values. In my response to his work, I suggest that integrating both John Dewey’s pragmatic understanding of the moral situation and Kenneth Burke’s rhetorical interpretation of motives helps bolster Evans’s cause and provides support for a political movement that aims to bridge the divide between science and religion in the epoch of the Anthropocene.
Francesco Petrarch was a pioneering figure not only in the study of
the humanities, but also in t... more Francesco Petrarch was a pioneering figure not only in the study of the humanities, but also in the defense of the humanities. A prolific writer and avid reader of the classics, particularly of the historians, rhetoricians, and poets, Petrarch cleared the way for humanistic studies in an age dominated by rigid scholasticism. Not surprisingly, then, Petrarch also had to defend himself against attacks from establishment elites who condemned the new studies as useless distractions from the pursuit of knowledge, by which they meant the study of syllogisms. I argue in this essay that Petrarch’s invectives against his detractors offer a unique and communicative defense of the humanities that does not rely on the traditional recourse to civic humanism, a tradition that arose only subsequent to Petrarch. In his understanding of humanism, the value of humanistic studies is found in their capacity to produce a combination of humility and love—humility by expanding the circumference of our experience and exposing the limitations of our knowledge, and love by the capacity to create unity out of division. Furthermore, Petrarch defines the enduring opponent of the humanities as the scholastic ignoramus, a character that endures today.
The next decade will be one of the most decisive periods in human history. We currently face the ... more The next decade will be one of the most decisive periods in human history. We currently face the reality of a coming climate catastrophe brought about by centuries of industrial resource extraction from the planet and the accompanying mass exploitation of its human population, and as a result “we will soon find ourselves confronted by movements of disadvantaged people across borders that dwarfed those of previous eras” (Stanley 192). According to Jason Stanley, these conditions make a situation ripe for the rise of fascism: “Traumatized, impoverished, and in need of aid, refugees, including legal immigrants, will be recast to fit racist stereotypes by leaders and movements committed to maintaining hierarchical group privilege and using fascist politics” (192). The fact that climate change now threatens everyone’s existence simultaneously and demands such thorough reconstruction of virtually every aspect of social life makes it predictable that fascism would spring up across the face of the earth in different guises to resist these imperatives. Rhetoricians today face no more pressing challenge than to diagnose and counter this global movement as part of a larger effort to stave off the barbarism that fascism eagerly unleashes on history. This review essay contributes to this effort by reading four popular books that purport to confront this challenge head-on without reducing fascism to a caricature that gratifies its critics while casting the real issues into shadow.
One of the most outstanding characteristics of the digital age is the ubiquity of the image. Imag... more One of the most outstanding characteristics of the digital age is the ubiquity of the image. Images are not only easily captured, but easily manipulated and distributed for rhetorical effect, as we see in social networking, advertising, political campaigning, or coordinated propaganda. Making classical rhetoric relevant to the digital age thus requires specific attention to its treatment of the image. And this is precisely what we find in one of the earliest extant rhetorical texts of the Sophists—Gorgias’s Encomium of Helen. Although most well-known for its glorification of the power of logos in its capacity as a dynastes megas, it is significant that Gorgias in the Helen gives equal time to eros as a force capable of moving men and women to action men. Notably, eros is not conceptualized as an emotional impulse that arises in the heart, but rather a purely physiological reaction to the sensation of sight. The counterpart of eros is thus not hatred but fear, representing a compulsion to flee. And the source of both love and fear are images—whether they be of painted statues or clashing armor of bronze and iron, respectively. This chapter explicates a sophistical understanding of visual rhetoric and its relationship to logos, a relationship that I believe has become even stronger in the digital age to the degree that the reign of logos as a dynastes megas is now built upon the foundation of the visual image.
Reading Paulo Freire’ s Pedagogy of the oppressed, one might easily conclude that rhetoric has no... more Reading Paulo Freire’ s Pedagogy of the oppressed, one might easily conclude that rhetoric has no place in a classroom so thoroughly imbued with the ethics of dialogue. However, this essay suggests that rhetoric plays a productive and in fact necessary role in Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed. Drawing from the sophistical techniques of imitatio and dissoilogoi, I suggest that true liberation from a dominated consciousness goes through rather than around the methods of rhetorical persuasion, methods that not only develop rhetorical skills in students but that also encourage rhetorical performance on the part of the educators. Dialogue remains central to this pedagogy but becomes enriched by its natural counterpart, rhetoric, so that the aim is not only cognitive liberation but the accrual of practical power.
In order to highlight the genuinely radical nature of John Dewey’s educational and democratic vis... more In order to highlight the genuinely radical nature of John Dewey’s educational and democratic vision this essay articulates a vision of contemporary rhetorical education that is grounded in a pragmatic rereading of Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the “will to power.” Drawing from Dewey’s treatment of the will to power in Human Nature and Conduct, I argue that rhetorical pedagogy seeks to arouse, channel, and finally compose the impulses of students through the activity of intelligence in such a way that reflects and advocates for students’ interests within a democratic ethic of advocacy, criticism, and deliberation.
Peirce famously defined the process of thinking as what a person is " 'saying to himself,' that i... more Peirce famously defined the process of thinking as what a person is " 'saying to himself,' that is, is saying to that other self that is just coming into life in the flow of time. " For Peirce, this meant the essence of thinking is dialogue. This essay proposes a conception of dialogue grounded in Peirce's normative ideal of inquiry that challenges contemporary thinking about dialogue yet supports the same moral and ethical aims. Using a scene from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice that Peirce used as an exemplar of dialogue, we propose a conception that begins in doubt and passes through phases of reasoning and ethical and esthetic judgment before coming to a resolution which expands horizons of thought, emotion, and action.
Review Essay: The Evolving Citizen: American Youth and the Changing Norms of Democratic Engagemen... more Review Essay: The Evolving Citizen: American Youth and the Changing Norms of Democratic Engagement, by Jay P. Childers, After the Public Turn: Composition, Counterpublics, and the Citizen Bricoleur, by Frank Farmer, Prophets, Gurus, Pundits: Rhetorical Styles & Public Engagement, by Anna M. Young, and Letters to Power: Public Advocacy Without Public Intellectuals, by Samuel McCormick.
When Anna White Dildane, a prostitute and heroin addict, was committed to the Laboratory of Socia... more When Anna White Dildane, a prostitute and heroin addict, was committed to the Laboratory of Social Hygiene (LSH) in 1917, she was treated by a staff that anticipated the methods of the biopsychosocial model later developed by Engel. That is to say, the staff members believed that Anna’s rehabilitation was contingent on a scientific diagnosis of the physical, mental, and social factors that underlay her condition. However, using Anna and the LSH as a case study, we draw from Latour to show the limitations of this “modern” method of diagnosis and treatment that persists today. Using Burke, we advocate for a pragmatic orientation focused on creating rhetorically oriented narratives whose aim is to help patients make judgments about their health and future, namely, by bringing about the experience of “form” capable of constituting new types of identification. Effective medical rhetoric thus adopts a method of persuasion that begins with the narrative and self-understanding of the patient, links aspects of that narrative with the technical expertise of physicians and other health care providers, and crafts a new, more specialized narrative attentive to the desires and constraints of a patient’s form of identification that is ultimately the seat of judgment.
In this essay, we look at how three traditional forms of performance identified by Walter Benjami... more In this essay, we look at how three traditional forms of performance identified by Walter Benjamin function in the digital age. With greater accessibility to the means of production, digital performances can be created by just about anyone. The performances we analyze show how Benjamin's conception of the storyteller, the novelist, and the charlatan can thrive in online environments. While the performances of the storyteller and the novelist suggest new possibilities for online performance, the performance of the charlatan demonstrates the danger of not engaging with/in online performance.
Revista Educação e Cultura Contemporânea 12 (28): 164-183, 2015
Com o objetivo de elucidar a natureza genuinamente radical da visão educacional e democrática de ... more Com o objetivo de elucidar a natureza genuinamente radical da visão educacional e democrática de John Dewey, este ensaio articula uma visão da educação retórica contemporânea que se fundamenta em uma releitura do conceito de “vontade de poder”
de Friedrich Nietzsche. Considerando o tratamento dado por Dewey à vontade de poder em Human Nature and Conduct, defendo que a pedagogia retórica busca despertar, canalizar e finalmente compor os impulsos do estudante por meio da atividade da
inteligência, de modo a refletir e defender a escolha individual. O ensaio conclui com a definição de três atribuições chamadas genealogia, previsão e defesa.
The vibrancy and health of political culture in democratic societies increasingly depends on the ... more The vibrancy and health of political culture in democratic societies increasingly depends on the publicity and resolution of public scientific controversies. However, creating a framework for analysis that avoids reductive categorization remains a difficult task. This essay proposes a Habermasian framework of analysis for public scientific controversies and draws out its rhetorical implications. We argue that the roots of public scientific controversies are found in moments of urgency that call forth contested scientific theories into the public realm. These controversies embed epistemological disputes over knowledge-claims within pragmatic contexts, thus forcing interested parties to achieve some level of intersubjective consensus on the legitimacy of broad-based policies that fuse politics, ethics, and science. These controversies thus provide the situational grounds that make possible, if not always actual, the interaction among citizens, scientists, and legislators through rhetorical forums that feature the discursive interplay among epistemological concerns, aesthetic experience, moral valuation, and practical judgment.
The lesson of Homer’s Iliad is that eloquence arises out of a confrontation with death. Perhaps t... more The lesson of Homer’s Iliad is that eloquence arises out of a confrontation with death. Perhaps the most dramatic of these confrontations is the death of Patroclus, an event that elicits epideictic speech by three parties: immortal horses, Xanthos and Balios; an immortal god, Zeus; and a mortal human, Patroclus. However, although the reaction of the horses and of Zeus reflect the pathos and logos of eloquence, respectively, this essay argues that true eloquence grows out of an experience of a divided self that heroically judges its own life meaningful—thereby constituting ethos through speech—in the face of death.
When Alan Gross published The Rhetoric of Science in 1990, he helped initiate a productive contro... more When Alan Gross published The Rhetoric of Science in 1990, he helped initiate a productive controversy concerning the place of rhetoric in science studies while arguing for the continued importance of the classical rhetorical tradition. However, in his 2006 revision, Starring the Text, Gross significantly draws back the classical emphasis while making more central the place of the American analytic philosophical tradition stemming from the foundational logical writings of W.V.O Quine. This essay interrogates this shift in Gross’s writings in order to find the working definition of rhetoric that threads throughout his work. This definition, I argue, turns out to be grounded more in Quine’s holistic theory of epistemology than in any sophistical or even Aristotelian conception of language as a vehicle for advocating judgment in times of deliberation and crisis. I argue that a return to the classical emphasis on situated practice can enrich the study of the rhetoric of science and build on the significant accomplishments of Gross’s work.
The lesson of Homer’s Iliad is that eloquence arises out a confrontation with death. Perhaps the ... more The lesson of Homer’s Iliad is that eloquence arises out a confrontation with death. Perhaps the most dramatic of these confrontations is the death of Patrocus, an event which elicits epideictic speech by three parties: immortal horses, Xanthos and Balios, an immortal god, Zeus, and a mortal human, Patroclus. However, although the reaction of the horses and of Zeus reflect the pathos and logos of eloquence, respectively, we argue that true eloquence grows out of an experience of a divided self that heroically judges its own life meaningful—thereby constituting ethos through speech—in the face of death.
Rhetoric is an art that finds its habitation in events. Rhetoric emerges within growing points of... more Rhetoric is an art that finds its habitation in events. Rhetoric emerges within growing points of opposition and struggle, using language to constitute facts that stand out from situations in order to give to an audience the burden of judgment. This article seeks to provide a framework for articulating the relationship between rhetoric and events through the writings of John Dewey and his collaborator Arthur Bentley, who found in the term “event” a way of advancing their transactional perspective on human action that they believed could function as a corrective to pervasive social pathologies. Using their vocabulary, it advances a definition of rhetoric as an art that reacts to events by constituting meaningful situations in which judgments of character are possible. But it also claims that the ethics of transaction requires a more subtle and long-term effort to show how our own characters as “individuals” are themselves formed in transaction with rhetoric and events.
This article accepts Lipari's invitation to continue rethinking communication along the lines of ... more This article accepts Lipari's invitation to continue rethinking communication along the lines of artful listening as understood through the lens of phenomenology. However, we trace out the implications following a different phenomenological tradition than the one stemming from the German tradition of Heidegger and Husserl—specifically, the phenomenology of Charles Sanders Peirce, who allows us to see listening differently and perhaps more clearly. The primary contribution from Peirce's phenomenology is the logos he uses to extract 3 fundamental categories of thought and nature: Firstness (Quality), Secondness (Relation), and Thirdness (Mediation). As we shall show, listening is characterized by a plural consciousness sensitive to Mediation as it reveals itself through Relation and Quality.
Although he was most famous for his books of fiction and philosophy, 20th century Spanish public ... more Although he was most famous for his books of fiction and philosophy, 20th century Spanish public intellectual Miguel de Unamuno also wrote a large body of newspaper articles in which he critiqued politics and society during his lifetime. Unamuno lived during a polarized time in Spanish history, and he witnessed many political and social conflicts, including the Third Carlist War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, a military dictatorship, the Second Spanish Republic, Franco’s military coup, and the Spanish Civil War. In the midst of this atmosphere of conflict and polarization, Unamuno used the medium of the newspaper to diagnose Spain’s problem and to present possible solutions. This project examines the rhetorical style that Unamuno developed in response to his political context, as he examined Spanish society and the various political regimes in Spain. As he defined the problem, Unamuno characterized it as one of ideology, excess rationalism, and inauthenticity. To solve this problem, Unamuno approached it in two ways. First, he acted as what he called an “idea-breaker,” or as one who assumes an attitude of skepticism and uses individual thought to break down ideas and dogma. Second, he created a unified collective consciousness in Spain through what he called intrahistory, or the history that occurs beneath the level of written history. Intrahistory comprises the everyday bonds between people, and Unamuno used this to build a community and a collective consciousness in the people of Spain. He did this through his use of language, descriptions of the physical environment, deep bonds of personal relationships, legends, and spiritual authenticity.
The accidental opening of the Berlin Wall on November 9th, 1989, dismantled the political narrati... more The accidental opening of the Berlin Wall on November 9th, 1989, dismantled the political narratives of the East and the West and opened up a rhetorical arena for political narrators like the East German citizen movements, the West German press, and the West German leadership to define and exploit the political crisis and put forward favorable resolutions. With this dissertation, I trace the neglected and forgotten political directions as they reside in the narratives of the East German citizen movements, the West German press, and the West German political leadership between November 1989 and February 1990. The events surrounding November 9th, 1989, present a unique opportunity for this endeavor in that the common flows of political communication between organized East German publics, the West German press, and West German political leaders changed for a moment and with it the distribution of political legitimacy. To account for these new flows of political communication and the battle between different political crisis narrators over the rhetorical rights to reestablish political legitimacy, I develop a rhetorical model for political crisis narrative. This theoretical model integrates insights from political crisis communication theories, strategic narratives, and rhetoric. My analyses then test this model by tracing the narrative trajectories and rhetorical transformations of the narrative enactments by the East German citizen movements, the West German press, and the West German political leadership. As recent historical research revealed, Helmut Kohl favored what others refers to as the “pre-fabrication model” for German and European unification, which entails the expansion of West German and European legal, political, and economic systems eastward. Using Sarotte’s research about Kohl’s prefab model as a rhetorical anchor, my reconstructions of the different political crisis narratives reveal how the individual narratives support or weaken Helmut Kohl’s pre-fabrication model for German and European reunification. Finally, while the West’s rhetoric of practical politics, economic necessity, and rapid unification offered short-term solutions for political and economic integration, it concealed long-term narrative possibilities for German and European integration. Thus, this dissertation discusses the hidden rhetorical possibility for German and European political integration as they reside within the discourse between the East German opposition groups, the West German press, and the West German political leadership.
In this project, I track the development of Margaret Fuller’s rhetoric of transcendental
national... more In this project, I track the development of Margaret Fuller’s rhetoric of transcendental nationalism within the context of the Roman revolution in 1848. My central purpose is to situate the legacy of Margaret Fuller in the field of rhetorical theory and criticism, as well as to position her dispatches from Italy as the culmination of her work—not an eclipse of her previous writings, but a vital part of any understanding of the woman, the writer, the Transcendentalist, the feminist, the nationalist, the revolutionary that was Margaret Fuller. Furthermore, I argue that Fuller’s dispatches offer a model for a distinctly transcendental form of nationalism through her combined skills, such as critiquing large networks of power, her classical knowledge and familiarity with the language of myth, her growing narrative form and structure, her love of German-Romantic philosophy and literature, her literary nationalist voice, and her deeply-rooted belief in the collective power of the Italian people. Although arriving as a travel-writer abroad, Fuller was also a foreign correspondent for the New-York Tribune with the task of reporting back on any and all happenings. Europe, at the time, was in a tumultuous state, which would soon erupt in open insurrection and full-blown revolution. And Fuller was right in the middle of it. After travelling through England and France, she arrived in Italy and quickly became a convert to the Italian nationalist cause. Although her dispatches begin with descriptions of her encounters with art, nature and culture, once in Italy Fuller adopts a more aggressive rhetorical voice that quickly evolves into a sophisticated rhetoric of transcendental nationalism. This dissertation will explore how Fuller transformed her Transcendental belief in the power of individualism and the art of self-culture into a radical, revolutionary, nationalist rhetorical style that called a nation together based on common origin, character, spirit, and destiny in an effort to pursue a new Democratic Order. This dissertation thus traces the works of Margaret Fuller beginning with her major publications in America, continuing through her dispatches from Europe (1846-1850), and ending with a distinct rhetorical form and style, which I call the rhetoric of transcendental nationalism.
Walden queers its readers. While many have investigated Thoreau’s queerness, there has been littl... more Walden queers its readers. While many have investigated Thoreau’s queerness, there has been little notice of Walden’s queerness. This project begins with a situational analysis that identifies the melancholic antecedents of Walden in Thoreau’s life and his choices that led to the illumination of his melancholia. Thoreau had already been experimenting with what Branka Arsić identified as “literalization.” Nevertheless, a period of crisis, detailed by Robert Milder, made him aware of what Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok have referred to as the melancholic’s blind skill of “demetaphorization.” I suggest that Thoreau exploited this skill to produce Walden’s unique ability to feed on and, as Henry Abelove and Henry Golemba have suggested, awaken its reader’s desires. I combine a close reading of Walden with selective study of the text’s reception. Walden delivers on Thoreau’s theory of friendship from his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Walden’s friendship with its reader is the agency that accomplishes what Henry Golemba and Lawrence Buell have noted as a blurring of the boundary between reader and text. To investigate this friendship and Walden’s accommodations of faux friendship, I construct a Burkean perspective by incongruity using research in the nature-writing and rhetoric disciplines that intersect with Thoreauvian studies. This incongruity is analyzed using not only Burke’s theories of literary form and literature as equipment for living, but also Deleuze’s process philosophy and Deleuze and Guattari’s analyses of the war machine and their spatial analysis. This project complexifies Erin Rand’s research on polemics, using Deleuze’s multiplicity not only to explain why polemics are unpredictable, but also to address what Sarah Hallenbeck has referred to as “the crisis of agency.” I suggest an expansion of José Esteban Muñoz’s research. The question of how one actually transitions from melancholia to disidentification cannot be adequately answered with terms like Stuart Hall’s ‘oppositional reading’ or Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘de/reterritorialization.’ I also suggest that queer utopian thinking and poststructuralism are more compatible than previously argued. This dissertation is itself a polemic, straining the possibilities of friendship in the service of queerness.
This study argues that Sherlock Holmes serves as rhetorical equipment for living. Using Kenneth B... more This study argues that Sherlock Holmes serves as rhetorical equipment for living. Using Kenneth Burke’s theory of symbolic appeal and the critical tool proposed in the essay “Literature as Equipment for Living,” I explore how Holmes responds to the rhetorical situation of early nineteenth century England and consider why the Holmes symbol continues to appeal to audiences. I conclude that rhetoric is a necessary component of the Sherlock Holmes symbol and suggest that Holmes’s famous method is rhetorical rather than syllogistic.
This analysis is an attempt to study the rise of a new mobile food medium the food truck. I exami... more This analysis is an attempt to study the rise of a new mobile food medium the food truck. I examine the movement of rhetorical actors, the situation, the audiences, and discourses created and sustained through rhetorical practices. These include looking into contemporary controversies, the history and storytelling that helps to convey identity, a new aesthetic experience created by the medium, and specifically their sophistic character and rhetoric helping them speak on issues of social justice and change. To understand these texts, I examine each of them in light of their rhetorical situation and the convergence of a multitude of kairotic factors. I use the situation as a hinge to examine how the movement, through its rhetorical practices and characters have changed the foodscape and the foodways of the communities in which they are active.
This analysis probes the unique nature of the American Literary Humorist by looking at three exem... more This analysis probes the unique nature of the American Literary Humorist by looking at three exemplary cases of this type of figure: Mark Twain, James Thurber, and David Sedaris. Rather than dissecting their works to the point that they become unfunny, this piece examines their interaction with the times and publics that form their audiences. Doing so allows us to better understand their resonance both during their own times and today and gives us a better look at what really makes them stand out in the history of American letters.
This dissertation explores the rhetorical components of the famous novel Don Quixote by Miguel de... more This dissertation explores the rhetorical components of the famous novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Cervantes’ novel continues to be celebrated around the world four hundred years later. His two main protagonists epitomize opposite virtues, but their love for one another, and the promise of an ínsula, creates a bond that overcomes their differences. Don Quixote, the mad knight, values lofty ideas idealized in chivalric romance. Conversely, Sancho, the simple squire, values tangible materials he can see and touch in his own life. While the two characters first appear to be contrary in nature, by the journey’s end, as displayed in their speeches, have grown and learned from one another. Analyzing how these two rhetors develop throughout the course of the novel is the aim of this dissertation. By developing their models, I show the essence of their rhetorical strategies as example for real life practice. Literature provides what Kenneth Burke calls “an equipment for living.” On the one hand, the essence of Don Quixote’s rhetoric romantically transcends tragic situations inspiring heroic action to provide catharsis and experiences for learning. Readers can use his failures and successes as equipment for living, as he stubbornly challenges opposition and never backs down. On the other hand, Sancho’s rhetoric prudently imitates those around him, transcending lofty ideas into grotesque realism. He is the perfect sidekick: loyal, compassionate, critical, and funny. Both Don Quixote’s and Sancho’s rhetorical strategies act as resources for approaching changes in society. Coupled together, the persuasive skills of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza provide great insight for students of rhetoric as these two characters create rhetorical strategies for confronting impious change in society.
This thesis examines Cornel West’s description of the human condition and the works of art produc... more This thesis examines Cornel West’s description of the human condition and the works of art produced in three particular ways. First, there is being human which is a universal condition that speaks to all people and their struggles in the face of death and fallibility. Second, there is the condition of being modern, which speaks to people in a particular age in which power must be challenged with intelligence. Third, there is the idea of being American, which is to confront historical legacies of injustice through political action and agency. Rhetoric speaks to these existential crises and draws its resources from jazz, blues, tragicomic and prophetic pragmatism to create a community of affiliation and rich discourse that’s beneficial and productive for all.
This is a study of the theory of critical Sophistic logic that underwrote Hu Shi’s involvement in... more This is a study of the theory of critical Sophistic logic that underwrote Hu Shi’s involvement in China’s 20th century reform period known as the Chinese Renaissance. Hu Shi was a radical liberal reformer who played a leading role in the New Culture Movement. He pursued a two-pronged project for cultural reform. One side of the reform was focused on developing a critical pragmatic logical theory. This side was aimed at the intellectual class and appealed to the heritage of the Confucian literati. The other side of the reform was focused on lifting the people’s vernacular language from vulgarity to serve as the foundation for an aesthetically developed and nationally shared knowledge. The national language and body of knowledge would equip the common people with tools for communicating with one another to share experiences and coordinate judgments about situations of public contingency. This side of the reform appealed to the heritage of the oral tradition. Hu Shi conceived of the two sides of the reform in coordination. They would bridge the traditional divide between the intellectual and common class and unify the nation in critical rhetorical language. Hu developed the Literary Revolution to pursue goals on both sides of the reform. It would make the vernacular language the national language by elevating its status and expanding the accessibility of written materials. He wanted to make cultural exposure and education common for all. With education and literacy, the people could gain a sense of the future, a body of shared experiences, and the ability to address the most pressing problems of the day.
This dissertation explores the writings of the American public intellectual and theologian Reinho... more This dissertation explores the writings of the American public intellectual and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971). My project is a unique contribution to Niebuhrian studies in that I approach these works from the perspective of a rhetorical theorist. My intention is to parse from Niebuhr’s editorial commentaries, his philosophical inquiries and lectures, his theological treatises, and his sermonic essays an specifically “Niebuhrian ethics of rhetoric.” In order to accomplish this task I investigate the rhetorical situation Niebuhr was embedded in and to which he was responding to at the turn of the twentieth century. Part of the analysis of his rhetorical situation places him in conversation with other thinkers writing at the turn of the century, such as John Dewey and Walter Lippmann. From the rhetorical situation, the dissertation tackles Niebuhr’s thought in three categories: Niebuhr’s mythic—specifically Christian—approach to history, his dialectical approach to love, justice, grace and power, and finally, his rhetorical approach to the contemporary situations that call for judgment. I argue that Niebuhr’s ethics of rhetoric are specifically Christian, in that they provide, on the one hand, the necessary mythic and dialectical tools one needs to make judgments in tragic realm of contingency, and on the other hand, the hope and faith that is required to move beyond the tragic realm of rhetoric without despair or cynicism. Niebuhr’s characteristic “pragmatic Christian realism,” I argue, is a much-needed approach to the ethics of rhetoric, one that is important for us to understand in a globalized “electric age,” wherein the shared myths that found communities elude us, though we remain asked to make judgments that effect collectives we may never see face-to-face. Niebuhr’s ethics of rhetoric is a guiding light for a rhetorical approach that moves past the local community, fragmented since the industrial revolution and rationalized since the Enlightenment, to a broader sense of community that is neither Jewish nor Greek—neither, me might add, Muslim or Western. It is a rhetoric that moves us confidently, yet qualifiedly, into the future that is beyond tragedy.
The two of them passed the sign welcoming them to “The Future Hummel Lane Estates.” The sign had ... more The two of them passed the sign welcoming them to “The Future Hummel Lane Estates.” The sign had a large, grinning bee on it. Marty wasn’t sure what the bee had to do with the houses or why it was grinning. If anything, the construction had bulldozed whatever bees had once been there, so the bee had no right to be happy. Then again, everyone was destined to get bulldozed by somebody. They might as well try to make the most of it. The giant bee knew the score and was taking his family to New Jersey. It was his chance to make it big in the pollen racket. He was just following the American way by making his living off of the dead. It was what they all did, and Marty was no exception. He was feeding off of Frank’s memory just as much as the bee was feeding off his family’s rotting bee carcasses.
For the original American pragmatists, human experience in a natural and social environment is th... more For the original American pragmatists, human experience in a natural and social environment is the origin and end of all human thought and action, with language being a means of transforming and guiding that experience. The intellectual movement known as ...
81 revolutionary frame to celebrate knots of contradictions, Fleckenstein reminds readers that th... more 81 revolutionary frame to celebrate knots of contradictions, Fleckenstein reminds readers that this final knot does not ensure social action or change: "When antinomy, digressive rhetoric, and radical places tightly intertwine, a symbiotic knot can be dangerous; a knot can choke change rather than foster it" (145). It is this kind of sensibility to the potentials and pitfalls of attempting social action that make the book accessible and convincing. While at times seeming to spell out the proverbial silver bullet for social action, Fleckenstein is careful to counter such passages with doses of pragmatism.
not need a specific deliverable. Ryder lays out her assignment sheets in order, presenting an arc... more not need a specific deliverable. Ryder lays out her assignment sheets in order, presenting an arc for a public writing course. Again, the spirit of the offering is the spirit of praxis. The materials are clearly to be taken not as an ending but as a platform for further conversation about what we must, or might, do.
When John Dewey announced that communication was the most wonderful of all affairs, he recognized... more When John Dewey announced that communication was the most wonderful of all affairs, he recognized the centrality of communication within the tradition of American pragmatism. In other traditions of philosophy, such as idealism or empiricism, communication certainly played a role, but usually it was a secondary function of transmitting ideas from one mind to another. In idealism, ideas were discovered through intuitive revelation of the whole and only later expressed through transcendent eloquence, whereas in empiricism, particular data was attained purely by the senses and communication served a kind of documentary function of fact gathering. Pragmatism, however, inverted this traditional hierarchy. By arguing that the meaning of our ideas was only found in their effects and consequences in experience, particularly those consequences brought about through shared experience, pragmatists made communication both the origin and consummation of knowledge—regardless if that knowledge was practical, scientific, aesthetic, or social. Consequently, pragmatists believed that improving the quality of communication practices was central to improving not only the state of knowledge but the quality of our experience living together in a common world.
Poststructuralism represents a set of attitudes and a style of critique that developed in critica... more Poststructuralism represents a set of attitudes and a style of critique that developed in critical response to the growth and identification of the logic of structural relations that underlie social institutions—whether they exist in terms of politics, economics, education, medicine, literature, or the sciences. Poststructuralism should therefore not be thought of as a distinct philosophy that exists separately as its own “structure”—a proposition that would undermine its most fundamental attitudes. Rather, poststructuralism should be thought of as developing or arising only in response to pre-existing structures and, as a set of attitudes, helping us better understand, interpret, and alter our social environment by calling established meanings into question, revealing the points of ambiguity and indeterminacy inherent in any system, rejecting the rationalistic piety that all systems are internally coherent and circle around an unchanging center, showing how discourses are carriers of power capable of turning us into subjects, and placing upon us the burden of ethical responsibility that accompanies the acceptance of freedom.
Although poststructuralism by its very nature as a set of attitudes denies any attempt at comprehensive definition, this essay examines three of the major postructuralist thinkers in order to relate their thought to the study of communication. First, following Derrida, poststructuralist thought invites a critical deconstruction of any discourse that presents itself as completely coherent, centered, and rational. Poststructuralist approaches thus do not argue against a position by harnessing counterarguments drawing on a different set of principles. Rather, it deconstructs a discourse by occupying it and exposing the gaps, contradictions, paradoxes, and deferments, thus revealing its established hierarchies, binaries, logical conclusions, and principles to be far more loosely structured and poly-vocal than its advocates wish to present them. Second, following Barthes, poststructuralism refuses to locate any single point of origin of any text that can ground its meaning—particularly by pointing to some ground of the author. Although not denying that writers exist, Barthes refuses to identify the meaning of a text with the author’s biography and intentions, instead inviting multiple interpretations from the perspective of individual readers who encounter the text as a unique event. Therefore, just as discourses do not have a unified structure, neither do individual texts or the authors that produce them. Lastly, following Fouacult, poststructuralism invites an inquiry into how discourses, texts, and acts of communication are always implicated in relations of power that act upon possible actions. Following the first two propositions, poststructuralism does not analyze these relations of power as completely structured and determinate, however. Power relations are always within a dynamic relationship with acts of resistance, thereby constantly leaving space for freedom and possibility.
Aesthetics in communication represents the art of manipulating symbolic forms in such a way that ... more Aesthetics in communication represents the art of manipulating symbolic forms in such a way that it produces pleasure and pain through the manipulation of appearances and, at its most eloquent, conveys a sense of beauty that opens up a sphere of the possible. One can trace, however, three different ways of approaching the relationship between communication and aesthetics. First, aesthetics can be seen as the science of the senses. Second, aesthetics can be seen as the cultivation and communication of taste. And, third, aesthetics can be seen as the study and employment of form. The present entry explains these three perspectives on aesthetics by showing their origins in classical Greece, in the figures of Gorgias, Plato, and Aristotle.
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Books by Nathan Crick
Through a close reading of Dewey’s political writings and educational theory, Crick elaborates Dewey’s vision of democratic social life and the education required for its foundation. He shows that for Dewey, communication is essential to cultivating sympathy, intelligence, and creativity—habits of thought that form the core of democratic culture. Crick then lays out a broad curriculum of logic, aesthetics, and rhetoric for inculcating these habits in the classroom, arguing that if we are to meet the challenge of fascism, we must teach these new arts as if our civilization depends on it—because in our new age of politics, it does.
Comprehensive and pragmatic, this book presents an experimental model of education that can be applied across the humanities curriculum. It will be of interest to teachers of writing, composition, and rhetoric as well as scholars and students of communication studies, pedagogy, and political theory.
What is offered here is not a comprehensive genealogy of ideas, a series of individual biographies, or an effort at conceptual generalization, but instead an exercise in narrative rhetorical theory and criticism that interprets some of the major specific writings and speeches by men and women associated with the Transcendentalist movement—Sampson Reed, Amos Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, and Frederick Douglass—by placing them within a specific political and social history. Rather than attempting to provide comprehensive overviews of the life and work of each of these individuals, this volume presents close readings of individual texts that bring to life their rhetorical character in reaction to particular exigencies while addressing audiences of a unique moment. This rhetoric of Transcendentalism provides insights into the “keys of power”—that is, the means of persuasion for our modern era—that remain vital tools for individuals seeking to reconcile power and virtue in their struggle to make manifest a higher ideal in the world.
Investigating major works by Homer, Heraclitus, Aeschylus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Thucydides, Aristophanes, Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle, Rhetoric and Power tells the story of the rise and fall of classical Greece while simultaneously developing rhetorical theory from the close criticism of particular texts. As a form of rhetorical criticism, this volume offers challenging new readings to canonical works such as Aeschylus's Persians, Gorgias's Helen, Aristophanes's Birds, and Isocrates's Nicocles by reading them as reflections of the political culture of their time.
Through this theoretical inquiry, Crick uses these criticisms to articulate and define a plurality of rhetorical genres and concepts, such as heroic eloquence, tragicomedy, representative publicity, ideology, and the public sphere, and their relationships to different structures and ethics of power, such as monarchy, democracy, aristocracy, and empire. Rhetoric and Power thus provides a foundation for rhetorical history, criticism, and theory that draws on contemporary research to prove again the incredible richness of the classical tradition for contemporary rhetorical scholarship and practice.
Driving both projects is the always fragile faith in the intrinsic worth and potential of shared human experience. Sightless dogmatism, cynical irony, and apathetic ennui come easy in this and any age, for they offer escape from the demands of wisdom, judgment, and beauty. Nothing in the history of philosophy has shown philosophers, as a class, to be any less susceptible to these manifestations of the will to nothingness. Whatever else Dewey contributed to the intellectual traditional of humanism, his greatest achievement was to leave behind a corpus of writing that embodies the virtue of hope. It is, and has always been, the task of the greatest rhetoric to translate idealistic hope into social praxis, to turn visionary word into practical deed. Dewey has provided the hope. It falls to those now living and struggling in a world still wrought by strife, insecurity, and fear to sculpt discourses that dare to lift us toward unknown possibilities in the working faith that human beings have within themselves the capacities to prevail.
Dewey, however, does not adequately explain what he understands by “the art of full and moving communication” and never tells us how “communication” functions in the varied contexts of practical life. Despite, then, his obvious affection for communication, he leaves many questions about it unanswered. For instance, what makes communication possible? In what kind of situations is communication called for and why? How does an inchoate feeling or idea find concrete embodiment in language? What are the connections among language, communication, thought, feeling, and action? Most importantly, what is the process by which one employs the art of communication to influence the beliefs and behaviors of others?
This dissertation addresses these questions by approaching Dewey’s thinking on communication from a distinctly rhetorical perspective. Even though Dewey almost never mentions “rhetoric” in his entire corpus, I argue that it is precisely the absence of the term from his writings that makes a rhetorical reading of his work all the more imperative. Such a reading permits us to understand the practical importance of the “art of communication” in the larger context of his social thought. If, then, the problem with Dewey’s writing on communication is that it often drifts into abstractions, one remedy is take those abstractions and place them into concrete situations, where communication is required to transform some part of the environment through transaction with human thought and action. Because this kind of activity has been the specific domain of rhetoric since the time of the sophists, it is only appropriate to read Dewey’s work through that tradition.
In effect, the goal of this dissertation is to explicate Dewey’s theory of communication in the terms of a rhetorical theory. But insofar as his thought went through three distinct “periods” in his lifetime, beginning with his Idealistic period in 1880, moving into his Experimental period in 1903, and culminating in his Naturalistic period in 1925, Dewey can be said to have had three implicit rhetorical theories. To articulate and explain each of these theories, I trace Dewey’s theoretical development through time and construct, through published works, private correspondence, and biographical material. I show that the first theory envisioned rhetoric as a form of eros that helps us grow towards Absolute self consciousness. The second theory views rhetoric as a form of critical inquiry whose goal is the development of phronēsis, or practical wisdom. The third theory treats rhetoric as a productive technē, or a naturalistic form of art that has the power to transform experience, nature, and society through its transactional character.
By tracing Dewey’s theoretical development and explicating three implicit theories of rhetoric in his writings, this dissertation not only provides a unique perspective on Dewey’s changing views on language, ontology, and social practice, but also demonstrates how each theory can still be effectively used to interpret and guide the art of rhetoric. This kind of work enables us to grasp different facets of this diverse and vibrant art. At the same time, it shows how Dewey’s work remains an important resource for those who wish to promote and sustain a democratic way of life by educating citizens in the art of full and moving communication.
Papers by Nathan Crick
conflicts between science and religion are no longer simply matters
that concern only intellectual elites and armchair philosophers; they
are in many ways matters that will determine the degree to which
we can meet the challenges of our times. John H. Evans’s Morals Not
Knowledge represents an important provocation for those committed
not only to using scientific method as a resource for making moral
judgments but also to creating political alliances with religious constituencies. In this important work, Evans argues that most conflicts
between science and religion do not concern a clash between two
contradictory ways of knowing, but rather a clash over our moral
responsibilities and ultimate values. In my response to his work, I
suggest that integrating both John Dewey’s pragmatic understanding
of the moral situation and Kenneth Burke’s rhetorical interpretation
of motives helps bolster Evans’s cause and provides support for a political movement that aims to bridge the divide between science and
religion in the epoch of the Anthropocene.
the humanities, but also in the defense of the humanities. A prolific
writer and avid reader of the classics, particularly of the historians, rhetoricians, and poets, Petrarch cleared the way for humanistic
studies in an age dominated by rigid scholasticism. Not surprisingly, then, Petrarch also had to defend himself against attacks from establishment elites who condemned the new studies as useless distractions from the pursuit of knowledge, by which they meant the study of syllogisms. I argue in this essay that Petrarch’s invectives against his detractors offer a unique and communicative defense of the humanities that does not rely on the traditional recourse to civic humanism, a tradition that arose only subsequent to Petrarch. In his understanding of humanism, the value of humanistic studies is found in their capacity to produce a combination of humility and love—humility by
expanding the circumference of our experience and exposing the limitations of our knowledge, and love by the capacity to create unity out of division. Furthermore, Petrarch defines the enduring opponent of the humanities as the scholastic ignoramus, a character that endures today.
ethic of advocacy, criticism, and deliberation.
Hygiene (LSH) in 1917, she was treated by a staff that anticipated the methods of the biopsychosocial
model later developed by Engel. That is to say, the staff members believed that Anna’s rehabilitation
was contingent on a scientific diagnosis of the physical, mental, and social factors that underlay her
condition. However, using Anna and the LSH as a case study, we draw from Latour to show the
limitations of this “modern” method of diagnosis and treatment that persists today. Using Burke, we
advocate for a pragmatic orientation focused on creating rhetorically oriented narratives whose aim is to
help patients make judgments about their health and future, namely, by bringing about the experience
of “form” capable of constituting new types of identification. Effective medical rhetoric thus adopts a
method of persuasion that begins with the narrative and self-understanding of the patient, links aspects
of that narrative with the technical expertise of physicians and other health care providers, and crafts a
new, more specialized narrative attentive to the desires and constraints of a patient’s form of identification
that is ultimately the seat of judgment.
de Friedrich Nietzsche. Considerando o tratamento dado por Dewey à vontade de poder em Human Nature and Conduct, defendo que a pedagogia retórica busca despertar, canalizar e finalmente compor os impulsos do estudante por meio da atividade da
inteligência, de modo a refletir e defender a escolha individual. O ensaio conclui com a definição de três atribuições chamadas genealogia, previsão e defesa.
Through a close reading of Dewey’s political writings and educational theory, Crick elaborates Dewey’s vision of democratic social life and the education required for its foundation. He shows that for Dewey, communication is essential to cultivating sympathy, intelligence, and creativity—habits of thought that form the core of democratic culture. Crick then lays out a broad curriculum of logic, aesthetics, and rhetoric for inculcating these habits in the classroom, arguing that if we are to meet the challenge of fascism, we must teach these new arts as if our civilization depends on it—because in our new age of politics, it does.
Comprehensive and pragmatic, this book presents an experimental model of education that can be applied across the humanities curriculum. It will be of interest to teachers of writing, composition, and rhetoric as well as scholars and students of communication studies, pedagogy, and political theory.
What is offered here is not a comprehensive genealogy of ideas, a series of individual biographies, or an effort at conceptual generalization, but instead an exercise in narrative rhetorical theory and criticism that interprets some of the major specific writings and speeches by men and women associated with the Transcendentalist movement—Sampson Reed, Amos Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, and Frederick Douglass—by placing them within a specific political and social history. Rather than attempting to provide comprehensive overviews of the life and work of each of these individuals, this volume presents close readings of individual texts that bring to life their rhetorical character in reaction to particular exigencies while addressing audiences of a unique moment. This rhetoric of Transcendentalism provides insights into the “keys of power”—that is, the means of persuasion for our modern era—that remain vital tools for individuals seeking to reconcile power and virtue in their struggle to make manifest a higher ideal in the world.
Investigating major works by Homer, Heraclitus, Aeschylus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Thucydides, Aristophanes, Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle, Rhetoric and Power tells the story of the rise and fall of classical Greece while simultaneously developing rhetorical theory from the close criticism of particular texts. As a form of rhetorical criticism, this volume offers challenging new readings to canonical works such as Aeschylus's Persians, Gorgias's Helen, Aristophanes's Birds, and Isocrates's Nicocles by reading them as reflections of the political culture of their time.
Through this theoretical inquiry, Crick uses these criticisms to articulate and define a plurality of rhetorical genres and concepts, such as heroic eloquence, tragicomedy, representative publicity, ideology, and the public sphere, and their relationships to different structures and ethics of power, such as monarchy, democracy, aristocracy, and empire. Rhetoric and Power thus provides a foundation for rhetorical history, criticism, and theory that draws on contemporary research to prove again the incredible richness of the classical tradition for contemporary rhetorical scholarship and practice.
Driving both projects is the always fragile faith in the intrinsic worth and potential of shared human experience. Sightless dogmatism, cynical irony, and apathetic ennui come easy in this and any age, for they offer escape from the demands of wisdom, judgment, and beauty. Nothing in the history of philosophy has shown philosophers, as a class, to be any less susceptible to these manifestations of the will to nothingness. Whatever else Dewey contributed to the intellectual traditional of humanism, his greatest achievement was to leave behind a corpus of writing that embodies the virtue of hope. It is, and has always been, the task of the greatest rhetoric to translate idealistic hope into social praxis, to turn visionary word into practical deed. Dewey has provided the hope. It falls to those now living and struggling in a world still wrought by strife, insecurity, and fear to sculpt discourses that dare to lift us toward unknown possibilities in the working faith that human beings have within themselves the capacities to prevail.
Dewey, however, does not adequately explain what he understands by “the art of full and moving communication” and never tells us how “communication” functions in the varied contexts of practical life. Despite, then, his obvious affection for communication, he leaves many questions about it unanswered. For instance, what makes communication possible? In what kind of situations is communication called for and why? How does an inchoate feeling or idea find concrete embodiment in language? What are the connections among language, communication, thought, feeling, and action? Most importantly, what is the process by which one employs the art of communication to influence the beliefs and behaviors of others?
This dissertation addresses these questions by approaching Dewey’s thinking on communication from a distinctly rhetorical perspective. Even though Dewey almost never mentions “rhetoric” in his entire corpus, I argue that it is precisely the absence of the term from his writings that makes a rhetorical reading of his work all the more imperative. Such a reading permits us to understand the practical importance of the “art of communication” in the larger context of his social thought. If, then, the problem with Dewey’s writing on communication is that it often drifts into abstractions, one remedy is take those abstractions and place them into concrete situations, where communication is required to transform some part of the environment through transaction with human thought and action. Because this kind of activity has been the specific domain of rhetoric since the time of the sophists, it is only appropriate to read Dewey’s work through that tradition.
In effect, the goal of this dissertation is to explicate Dewey’s theory of communication in the terms of a rhetorical theory. But insofar as his thought went through three distinct “periods” in his lifetime, beginning with his Idealistic period in 1880, moving into his Experimental period in 1903, and culminating in his Naturalistic period in 1925, Dewey can be said to have had three implicit rhetorical theories. To articulate and explain each of these theories, I trace Dewey’s theoretical development through time and construct, through published works, private correspondence, and biographical material. I show that the first theory envisioned rhetoric as a form of eros that helps us grow towards Absolute self consciousness. The second theory views rhetoric as a form of critical inquiry whose goal is the development of phronēsis, or practical wisdom. The third theory treats rhetoric as a productive technē, or a naturalistic form of art that has the power to transform experience, nature, and society through its transactional character.
By tracing Dewey’s theoretical development and explicating three implicit theories of rhetoric in his writings, this dissertation not only provides a unique perspective on Dewey’s changing views on language, ontology, and social practice, but also demonstrates how each theory can still be effectively used to interpret and guide the art of rhetoric. This kind of work enables us to grasp different facets of this diverse and vibrant art. At the same time, it shows how Dewey’s work remains an important resource for those who wish to promote and sustain a democratic way of life by educating citizens in the art of full and moving communication.
conflicts between science and religion are no longer simply matters
that concern only intellectual elites and armchair philosophers; they
are in many ways matters that will determine the degree to which
we can meet the challenges of our times. John H. Evans’s Morals Not
Knowledge represents an important provocation for those committed
not only to using scientific method as a resource for making moral
judgments but also to creating political alliances with religious constituencies. In this important work, Evans argues that most conflicts
between science and religion do not concern a clash between two
contradictory ways of knowing, but rather a clash over our moral
responsibilities and ultimate values. In my response to his work, I
suggest that integrating both John Dewey’s pragmatic understanding
of the moral situation and Kenneth Burke’s rhetorical interpretation
of motives helps bolster Evans’s cause and provides support for a political movement that aims to bridge the divide between science and
religion in the epoch of the Anthropocene.
the humanities, but also in the defense of the humanities. A prolific
writer and avid reader of the classics, particularly of the historians, rhetoricians, and poets, Petrarch cleared the way for humanistic
studies in an age dominated by rigid scholasticism. Not surprisingly, then, Petrarch also had to defend himself against attacks from establishment elites who condemned the new studies as useless distractions from the pursuit of knowledge, by which they meant the study of syllogisms. I argue in this essay that Petrarch’s invectives against his detractors offer a unique and communicative defense of the humanities that does not rely on the traditional recourse to civic humanism, a tradition that arose only subsequent to Petrarch. In his understanding of humanism, the value of humanistic studies is found in their capacity to produce a combination of humility and love—humility by
expanding the circumference of our experience and exposing the limitations of our knowledge, and love by the capacity to create unity out of division. Furthermore, Petrarch defines the enduring opponent of the humanities as the scholastic ignoramus, a character that endures today.
ethic of advocacy, criticism, and deliberation.
Hygiene (LSH) in 1917, she was treated by a staff that anticipated the methods of the biopsychosocial
model later developed by Engel. That is to say, the staff members believed that Anna’s rehabilitation
was contingent on a scientific diagnosis of the physical, mental, and social factors that underlay her
condition. However, using Anna and the LSH as a case study, we draw from Latour to show the
limitations of this “modern” method of diagnosis and treatment that persists today. Using Burke, we
advocate for a pragmatic orientation focused on creating rhetorically oriented narratives whose aim is to
help patients make judgments about their health and future, namely, by bringing about the experience
of “form” capable of constituting new types of identification. Effective medical rhetoric thus adopts a
method of persuasion that begins with the narrative and self-understanding of the patient, links aspects
of that narrative with the technical expertise of physicians and other health care providers, and crafts a
new, more specialized narrative attentive to the desires and constraints of a patient’s form of identification
that is ultimately the seat of judgment.
de Friedrich Nietzsche. Considerando o tratamento dado por Dewey à vontade de poder em Human Nature and Conduct, defendo que a pedagogia retórica busca despertar, canalizar e finalmente compor os impulsos do estudante por meio da atividade da
inteligência, de modo a refletir e defender a escolha individual. O ensaio conclui com a definição de três atribuições chamadas genealogia, previsão e defesa.
strategic narratives, and rhetoric. My analyses then test this model by tracing the narrative trajectories and rhetorical transformations of the narrative enactments by the East German citizen movements, the West German press, and the West German political leadership.
As recent historical research revealed, Helmut Kohl favored what others refers to as the “pre-fabrication model” for German and European unification, which entails the expansion of West German and European legal, political, and economic systems eastward. Using Sarotte’s research about Kohl’s prefab model as a rhetorical anchor, my reconstructions of the different political crisis narratives reveal how the individual narratives support or weaken Helmut Kohl’s pre-fabrication model for German and European reunification. Finally, while the West’s rhetoric of practical politics, economic necessity, and rapid unification offered short-term solutions for political and economic integration, it concealed long-term narrative possibilities for German and European
integration. Thus, this dissertation discusses the hidden rhetorical possibility for German and European political integration as they reside within the discourse between the East German opposition groups, the West German press, and the West German political leadership.
nationalism within the context of the Roman revolution in 1848. My central purpose is to situate the legacy of Margaret Fuller in the field of rhetorical theory and criticism, as well as to position her dispatches from Italy as the culmination of her work—not an eclipse of her previous writings, but a vital part of any understanding of the woman, the writer, the Transcendentalist, the feminist, the nationalist, the revolutionary that was Margaret Fuller. Furthermore, I argue that Fuller’s dispatches offer a model for a distinctly transcendental form of nationalism through her combined skills, such as critiquing large networks of power, her classical knowledge and familiarity with the language of myth, her growing narrative form and structure, her love of German-Romantic philosophy and literature, her literary nationalist voice, and her deeply-rooted
belief in the collective power of the Italian people.
Although arriving as a travel-writer abroad, Fuller was also a foreign correspondent for the New-York Tribune with the task of reporting back on any and all happenings. Europe, at the time, was in a tumultuous state, which would soon erupt in open insurrection and full-blown revolution. And Fuller was right in the middle of it. After travelling through England and France, she arrived in Italy and quickly became a convert to the Italian nationalist cause. Although her dispatches begin with descriptions of her encounters with art, nature and culture, once in Italy Fuller adopts a more aggressive rhetorical voice that quickly evolves into a sophisticated rhetoric of transcendental nationalism. This dissertation will explore how Fuller transformed her Transcendental belief in the power of individualism and the art of self-culture into a radical, revolutionary, nationalist rhetorical style that called a nation together based on common origin, character, spirit, and destiny in an effort to pursue a new Democratic Order. This dissertation thus traces the works of Margaret Fuller beginning with her major publications in America, continuing through her dispatches from Europe (1846-1850), and ending with a distinct rhetorical form and style, which I call the rhetoric of transcendental nationalism.
Although poststructuralism by its very nature as a set of attitudes denies any attempt at comprehensive definition, this essay examines three of the major postructuralist thinkers in order to relate their thought to the study of communication. First, following Derrida, poststructuralist thought invites a critical deconstruction of any discourse that presents itself as completely coherent, centered, and rational. Poststructuralist approaches thus do not argue against a position by harnessing counterarguments drawing on a different set of principles. Rather, it deconstructs a discourse by occupying it and exposing the gaps, contradictions, paradoxes, and deferments, thus revealing its established hierarchies, binaries, logical conclusions, and principles to be far more loosely structured and poly-vocal than its advocates wish to present them. Second, following Barthes, poststructuralism refuses to locate any single point of origin of any text that can ground its meaning—particularly by pointing to some ground of the author. Although not denying that writers exist, Barthes refuses to identify the meaning of a text with the author’s biography and intentions, instead inviting multiple interpretations from the perspective of individual readers who encounter the text as a unique event. Therefore, just as discourses do not have a unified structure, neither do individual texts or the authors that produce them. Lastly, following Fouacult, poststructuralism invites an inquiry into how discourses, texts, and acts of communication are always implicated in relations of power that act upon possible actions. Following the first two propositions, poststructuralism does not analyze these relations of power as completely structured and determinate, however. Power relations are always within a dynamic relationship with acts of resistance, thereby constantly leaving space for freedom and possibility.