The Ends of Rhetoric

History, Theory, Practice

,.,:.~~
'j'

EDITED BY JOHN BENDER AND

D A V IDE. W ELL B E I( Y

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

.'ill/nforel, California T990

Rhetoricality:
On the Modernist Return of Rhetoric

JOHN BENDER AND DAVID E. WELLllERY

Roman architects enlploycd materials and methods of con-

struction utterly alien to the Greeks. Instead of the static post and
lintel system that stOod behind virtually all Greck architecture,
the Romans used concrete and brick to enclose space in dynamic
membranes based upon circular and spherical forms: the arch, the
dOInc, the vault. At the san1C tin1C, the ROlnans brilliantly intc-
gr~lted il1tO their inllnense structures the Hellenistic system of co-
lumnar ()rdcrs~()rdcrs that sccn1cd to manifest proportions funda-
111ental to geometry, to the human body, and to nature itself. Using
the orders as visual analogies to hUluan scale, the Romans an-
cbored vast edifices within the same perceptual framework as the
ohserver. The Pantheon's gorgeously encrusted marble interior tcs-
lilies that the Romans employed the orders in a full, coherent, and
';ystclnatic way as part of a figurative vocabulary, as devices to
\omI11unicatc the rcbtionship of hU111an proportion to 1110nl.UllCl1-
ul space.
Greek and Roman societies were differently constituted yet
IHlund together in a visual tradition that continued deep into the
Middle Ages. Once powerfully reformulated during the Italian Re-
11,11SS,lI1CC, this san1C tradition defined European architecture until

II t1lghtenment and Romantic periods. Fron1 this point onward,

!. .lcd, and ROInan classicisln came increasingly to be viewcd as
i'TlIllUl or historical styles~like the Egyptian, the Chinesc/ the
!'I'I';i:lll·-fr0111 arnong \vhich architectural choices Inight be 111ade.
i 1",I~'>J_cisI11 ceased to be the style and becan1c (J style. Even though

1\ ,hl\l;'I"I; and often Illg11Iy prestigious, usc'"oftFic-orckrs continued

.1
JOHN BENDER AND DAV!\) L. WELL1IERY
in the ninctccnth- and early t\vcnticth-ccntury official ,lfchitecture
associ,lted \vith the Ecole des Beaux Arts, the introduction of ne\v
structural materials such as cast iron and, above all, the prodigiolls
increase of scale that typifies buildings of the industrial era ulti-
mately toppled the orders. Their isolated revival as token elell1c~lts
in today!s so-called post111odern architecture Increly calls ,:ttentlon
to the fact of their demisc. \A/hen classical ,1rchitcctuf<ll tonns re-
turn on the contemporary scene, their mode of existence is funda-
mentally different-despite outward similarities of appearancc-
hOIn that which characterized theIn in antiquity and in prclnodern
Europe. Only a formalism blinded by its own abstractness could
overlook this historieol transformation.
In this essay! we shall 111ake an anJlogolls argument regarding
rhetoric as a tradition of discursive architecture and adornlncnt,
which, like the Greco· Roman paradigms of spatial organization,
don1inated the production, interpretation, teaching! and transI11is-
sion of speech and writing in Europe from antiquity to the En-
lighteIllnent and the Romantic period. Even Il10re clearly than in
postillodernist citations of classical architectural forms, ~!Ile C:~.~1
observe today a return of rhetorical inquirY"l rCStlrg~~l.~.~,gLJ.nt.d.­
lectual mtercstTrlI!ic·,SSUCS trcatcJliTClai;;icaf,iil(]·post",lassis,1L
iheoretician·sZ;rfhctoi·ic. Bllt-i-etur-Ilsa~r1CTrcpc"ilti(;ils;Xs~t<ierkegaard
';;;J-CiiIesDCie;izeEavcshown, arl<i10tl'eprosiL,~!j(2l]S.oLtksame.'
A ten1poral hiatus separates and dis-tinguishes them from their
original instance or reference. The contemporary return of rhetoric
presupposes! through its very struCture as return, an end of rheto-
ric/ a discontinuity within tradition, and an alteration that renders
the second version of rhetoric/ its Inodcrnist-postll1odernist redac-
tion, a new form of cultural practice and mode of analysis. To
understand the signincance of rhetoric today is to understand why
and in what ways it is discontinuous with its past.':
Although classical rhetoric followed a historical course differ-
ent in myriad details froln that of archi tcctunll orders, the broad
outlines correlate. The discipline of rhetoric-adaDted through a
\vidc range of refornlulations "to the specific rcquire!~lents of Gr~ck,
ROIl1an! lVlcdieval, and Renaissance societies-dominated Euro-
pean education and discourse, whether public or private! for 1110rc
than two thousand years. We can n1ercly glance at the rhetorical
conduct of thought ,lnd speech during this protracted epoch. We
shall concentrate instead on the two-phased period-the phases
4
Rhewrico]iLy
styled here in drastic abbreviation as thosc of the Enlightcnlncnt
and ROIllanticisIn-that brought ~lh()ut the end of classical rhetoric
as the dominant system of education and communication. We lo-
cate the factors (le~crnlining rhetoric's demise in a bundle of social
and cultural transformations that occurred, roughly speaking! be-
twecn the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. The various fac-
torS that caused, or accompanied, the demise of rhetoric Incrged
into two major historical trends: thc first banished rhetoric frOIn
the dOln2in of theoretical <md practiC<11 discourse; the second, from
that of imaginative or aesthetic discourse.
We begin hy outlining the historical factors that contributed to
the end of rhetoric. This historical construction then points us to a
thesis delineating rhetoric's modernist return. The specific shape
of this return-and thus the speciflc mode of existence of the new
rhetoric-can be grasped only with reference to the end that pre-
ceded it. In fact, the rebirth of rhetoric can take place only when
illOse factors that conditioned its cultur<ll de<lth arc themselves
eliminated. Modernism presents a cultural frame that, by contrast
with those of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, is hospitable
to, and even requires, a reinvigoration of the rhetorical. But/ as
compared with its classical antecedent! this rhetoric is radic<llly al-
Ined. These alterations we explore in a concluding survey of the
Illl'mises of SOInc excn1plary modern disciplines. The return of
thetoric is a return with a difference! a difference that resonates to
! lit' foundations of discursive practice.
The End oj Rhetoric. A Historical Sketch
In tracing the dcmise of rhetoric, or rather in highlighting SOIne
"I i i ' essential features, we distinguish two large phases of historical
d,vc\opment, the Enlightenment and Romanticism. These epochal
; II1lU.:pts designate Il1ajor tendencies in the post-Renaissance world
,,; I'uropean culture that exploded the hegemony of the claSSIcal
'1
~,~'
·/,\1,;,· .... 1
"., .~~.~
t
a~'/u
,,,.,,~ .. ,,,l
/1; .. ; .. " ."... ,1
«uu ..... J. ..... « .. I..U
.. l.." 1~;~ ... C'._;~ .• 1 __ ._ r"ll~_ . • ,..
l':'~~."-~, ..I;YJ.1'--'<}.!..~l!-!.!:&!.'1W W~_~Jl_!SA!
l' 1
l i( 'llll·~~",9LES:J2~.~t!i~!.1_C}J_d~,~tqrif_==IIQ.LilS_GD.nti.Dg1!.tiQ.!1-_h~5!.~!:?_£.S_ .._
!,p',~-~ible. Our use of the tenns '(Enlightenment/! and IfROlnanti~
. ,·"n" should not be taken to imply a typology of cultural epochs
i'''1 ({) suggest an all-too-linear logic of succession. On the contr,Hy,
,h, V.II ious cultural devc!opments we shall collect beneath these
',\'<0 Llllliliar tenns arc complexly interlocked, and their effects are

JOHN BENDER AND DAVID E. \VEl.LgEl~Y
visible up to the present day. This point holds also for what we
term the classical rhetorical tradition. Although we argue that this
tradition effectively ceased, \"ie of course notice that rhetoric main-
tained itself in numerous residual fonns throughout the very cen-
turies that empried it of cultural centrality.
Classical rhetoric survives today in strangely contracted fonn
as a subject taught in universities. It is contracted because so IllllCh
of the terrain over which it held absolute sway during the two n1il-
lennia between Aristotle and Bacon has now been appropriated by
other disciplines: linguistics, inforn1ation theory, stylistics, liter-
ary criticisll1, sociology, con1Inunications, n1arketing, public rela-
tions. From its earlicst appearance in Grecian Sicily to its residual
influence on secondary curricula of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, the discipline of rhetoric attended to the compilation of
instructional synopses often entitled "The Art of Rhetoric." At
first, rhetoricians dealt with the performative units of discourse~
with such parts of an orator's presentation as his exordium, his
relation of facts, his argumentation, his digressive illustration of
proof, his conclusion. Later, in imitation of poetics, they treated
the local phenomena of sentence structure and style, describing the
schemes of thought and the figures of speech that might be em-
ployed as devices of persuasion. Plato and Aristotle broadened the
discipline to include the psychology, sociology, and ethics of com-
munication and, abovc all, extended its descriptive typology to em-
brace the immense range of protological and quasilogical formu-
lations that characterize language use in public spaces. Thus, to
class~-,,!rhetoriceventually belonged the description and thcori~a:
tion of alGspectsof(lEct)urse-notconlprenended by tll~n1(Jre d;:
l1imtearonl1~tion.~oTgran-;111ar-andl(;grc,th_"--'"-thert;()_.<iiy;s;\~rii
oftFlCSo-called trivium withTI1-WIilc11Kno\vredge~"boutd iscursive
pi:actice was'-alstrib'lltC(l~-'--- -~ ------ -- _-- ---.- -.
- Rhetoric began-as a codification of oratorical usage. It survived
as an extraordinarily long-lived theory of verbal action in part be-
~2.~se it "v{~rkc:r1 t-n 'lr','n"nt- tnt' ]...,,,_h,-:,uir.... ;n rhp \T~c;:t rnlltinOf'nt
realm ofh~ma~ :iial(~;l~;uN;)~ic~'s~·i·~~;~~t~~~ti~~ th~~;~H-I;·-i·I~~~i~~~~
tionalization of rhetoric within the educational curricululll as-
sured that the ability to perform according to its principles in coun-
cIl chambers or legislatures, in legal disputes, or in public oratory
armed at praise and blame ibtcr to include sermons in church)
served as a 111arkcr of authority and social standing. The "over-
6 7
RheturicoJity
nice line!
coding" that Umberto Eco Hnds characteristic of rhetorical speech
I1uy signify, for instance, the seriollsness of ~l topic, an occasion, or
a C<l11SC.\ But this avcrcnding points, above all, to thc speaker\ ca-
pacity to employ it. Rhetorical speech 111arks, and is nurkcd by, so-
cial hierarchy.
Rhetorical speech adheres to power and property. Indeed, Cicero
tells us that Aristotle traced the origin of codified rhetoric to a
time, following the expnlsion of the tyrants 1467 B.C.), when confu-
sion over the title to confiscated property formerly hcld by return-
ing exiles led thc claimants to employ the expert assistance of
Corax and Tisias, These Sicilians no doubt wrote speeches for their
clients to memorize but also devised general rules of practice that
Corax set down in his, the first known, handbook or "art" of rheto-
ric:' As a specialized system of knowledge acquired, through for-
mal education, in order to maintain property and negotiate SOCi~11
interaction, the art of rhetoric discrilninates an10ng audiences ac-
cording to rank, education, and social character. The orator will ad-
dress equals in the legislature or judges in the court of law differ-
ently from thc crowd in the forum.
}Zhetoric is an art of positionality in address. Audiences are
characterized by status, age, telnperan1ent, education, and so forth.
Speakers arc impersonators who adapt themselves to occasions
,rr order to gain or maintain position. Thus the bond of dassical
,hetoric to speech itself, as opposed to writing, betokens the place
"I rhetoric in the physically demonstrative social systems that so
li(l\vcrfully institutionalized its doctrines: city-state democracy
.Illd its republican redactions as well as aristocracy. The cultur~l1
l
Iw.\',cmony of rhetoric as a practice of discourse, as a doctrine codi-
I ~'Illg that practice, and as a vehicle of cultural I11en10ry, is grounded
,rr I he social structures of the premodern world. Conceived in its
I'Hl;ldcst tenns, then, the dClnise of rhetoric coincides with that
11111,\', :lnd arduous historical process that is often tefIned modcrn-
! .1\ ion: the replacclllcnt of a sYll1holic-religious organization of 50-
, <.,1 ;Illd cultural life by rationalized forms, the gradual shift from a
II .It i fica tiona I differentiation of society to one that operates along
I \ Inc( lonal axes.:'
The antirhetorical bent of modernization shows itself first of
,II rr, the Enlightenment. TJ:1e.Ji~.~.r<lILeatur,,~f Enlightenment
11111 contravenes inherited rhetorical tradition is the dcvclopn1ent,
"I '·,Ilious don1ains, of <l_.. 1110dc of discourse conceived as neutral
-_._------_._----~
 J () It N 1\ L" ll! I{ 1\ N I I ();\ V I Il I "V I LI I'. III Y
In this
passage we nonpos.i~iUl1iJl,.'-J.l]5:.Lu:~~.~}~l?<lX~_!l.t. Nmvhcrc is this tendency more ap-
see playing {:)nrcn-t"than in the emergencc-~)fsciencc, the most powerful innova-
out the tion of the post-Renaissance world, a force that has transformed
argument \\'ith dizzying rapidity and thoroughness the Sh~1PC of life in Europe
and, more recently, beyond. FrOll1 its beginnings, science relied
over power on the convention of a putatively true and undistoned-·that is,
and truth, arhctorical-·-dcpiction of natural states of affairs. Bacon's Novurll
similar to the organWrl, one of the foundational texts for modern scientific think-
work of ing, variously attacks the practices of rhetoric. The critique of the
Conley ](Joli (ori, the idols of the marketplace, betrays in particular this
aspect of Bacon's progrmn: his denunciation of the illusions of a
discourse that is measured only by its persuasive appeal within
the shifting contexts of popular whinls, antagonisDls, and power
ploys His polemic mirrors central features 01 Plato's (or Socrates')
attack on the Sophists, those purveyors of rhetorical tricks and
marketcers of sClnblancc, power, and prestige. But whereas Plato
establishes dialectical ascent to the realm of suprasensible ide,ls as
the alternative to rhetoric, Bacon envisions an cuhetorical dis~
course that vvould ground itself in the empirical givens of nature.
"The true end, scope or office of knowledge," he writes in Vnlerius
TerrnhHls, or the Interpretation of Nature, "consist[s] not in any
plausible, delectable, reverend or admired discourse, or any satis-
factory arguments, but in effecting and working, and in discovery
of particulars not revealed before." This adherence to observable
givens leads to "the happy match between thc mind of man and the
nature of things. fl6
The new science envisioned by Bacon bespeaks a shift in the
relationships of power that define discourse. Scientific discourse is
no longer embedded within the array of relative power positions
that characterizes a stratified or hierarchical social structure; it
\vithdnlws from this interpersonal fray and takes as its opposite na-
ture itself, over which it endeavors to establish a total command.'
The subwct who holds this new form of power is no longer an indi-
vidual leader or hegeIl10nic group, but rather mankind in ,general. a
neutral or abstracted subject, a role that can be repre;ented by
whoever attains to the neutrality requisite for exercising it. Not
until the twentieth century would this universal subject of inquiry
be reparticularized as an amalgarn of theoretical p<lradigms, scicn-
tif-ic institutions, and sociopolitical positionality.
J<};eLoriu! lit y
The withdnl\·val of scientific discourse from the rhetorical fray
of fcud,l1 society is strikingly exemplified in the work of Bacon s 1
Italian counterpart GaliIeo, the founder of the mathclllatical strand
of scientific inquiry that dominates the modern world. Galileo's
life has been mythologized as the heroic battlc of the scientific
spirit against religious dogn1a and oppression, the tragic encounter
of the old world with the new. Although this has proved a per-
suasive lcgitiI11ating myth, we know tod~l)-' that Galileo operated as the divide
"skillful strategist within a complex network of political and rcli-
g,ious alliances. But this vcry strategic endeavor-realized, inevita-
bly, through the tactics of rhetoric-allows us to measure the gulf
that came to separate the rhetorical tradition from the discourse of
modern science. In t6IO, Galileo published, under the protection
uf his ruler, the Sidereus NUJ]cius (Storry lVlessenger), in which he
announced his construction of a telescope and reported on SOll1e of
the research conducted with that instrument. The text contains
two parts, a dedication to Galilco's patron, Cosimo Il de Medici,
;llld the actual account of the scientific observations. Here is a brief
passage from the dedication:
Indeed, the M~'lker of the stars himself has seemed by clear indications
to direct that I assign to these new planets Your Highness's famous
name in preference to all others. For JUSt as these stars, like children
worthy of their sire, never leave the side of Jupiter by any <lppr~ciablc
distance, so (as indeed who docs not know?! clemency, kindness of
heart, gentlcness of manner, splendour of royal blood, nobility in pub~
lie affairs, and cxcellency of authority and rule have all fixed their
abode and habitation in Your Highness. And who, I ask once more,
does not know that all thesc virtues Cl11al1nte from the benign star of
Jupiter, next after Cod as the source of all good things. Jupiterj Jupiter,
[ say, at the instant of Your Highness's birch, having already emerged
from the turbid mists of the horizon and occupied the midst of the
he,lVens, illuminating the eastern sky from his O\'/n royal housc,
looked out from that exalted throne upon your auspicious birth and
poured forth all his splendor and m,ljcSty in order that your tender
hody and your mind (already <ldorncd by Cod \vlth the most noble or-
1l,1IllCnts) might irnbibe with your first brcath that univcrsal influence
;llld power. S .
I Ill" dedication reflects and refers to a hierarchical situation-a
chain of power positions-and treats this distribution of
>'-'_-11IC<lJ
l"IWl'fS as its soIc and con1plcte reality. Within this utterly social
liid p<lrticular frame (everything hinges on the proper nan1C of
9
illustrated
relationship btw
JOIl~: BENDER :\1"'-:1> 1):\\111) L \Vl".I.LliEH.Y
rhetoric and power
Cosima!, the text situates itself ;lI1<J performs its operation by em-
phrying ';1lJ the strategies of classical epidcictic rhetoric. II:
ord.cr to
praise it sinltI1atcs a drarna of praise enacted across <1 chelln of elo-
quent figurations that drm\' on astrology, c1assiC<ll n1.Ythology, and
Christianity, and that even refashion the stars (th;:lt IS, the Inoons
of Jupiter whose discovery the report will announce) as tokens
within this gan1e of suasion.
When we turn to the properly scientific portion of Galilco's
text however we find no such rhetorical saturation, no overcoding
of tl;e discour'se. A new mode of address has emerged here that dif-
fers from thc old in far more than tone:
Thc most easterly sur was seven minutes from Jllpi~er and thiny.. sec·
onds from its neighbor; the western one was two mlIlutes away. Hom
Jupiter. The end stars wcrc very bright .and were larger than that In the
middle, which appeared vcry small. The most e~sterl~ star appeared a
little elevated toward the north from the str<llght hne through the
other planets ,md Jupiter. The fixed star preViously mentioned \Vd.S
eight minutes from the western planet along the lll1e drav·.'11 from It
perpendicularly to the straight line through all the plan~tS, as 5hO\\,·n
;lbove. lCalileo here refers to <l diagr~m t~1at prec~dcs thIS p'Issage.]
I have renoned these relations oi Jupiter and ItS companIOns with
the fixed sta~ so that anyone may comprehend th;:It the prog"r~ss of
thos<.: pbnets, both in longitude and latitude, agrees exactly \Vlt!) the
movements derived from planetary tables.
(Discol'eries and Opil1ions, p. 56.)
In scientific reporting, the author (clearly a writer now since there
is no simulation of oral speech) and reader comn1llDicatc without
~lwarcness of differential social rank. On the contrary, their posi-
tions are mutually interchangeable: the reader is addressed as the
potential observer of what the writer recounts as having hin1selt
observed. Perhaps we can even takc the telescope as the emblem of
this derhctoricized situation. It is an instrun1cnt of vision, not
of persuasion; it creates an abstract or asocial standpoint that .can
be assun1cd by anyone, and, as a matter of scientific conventIOn,
everyone who aSSU111es that standpoint is functionally the "same"
generalized observer, the same eye and I. Finally, the data the tele-
scope supplies provide an absolute standard against which any dis-
course purporting to describe them can be chccked and, if neces-
sary, corrected. The "message" of the Sidereus NUl1Cius appears to
cornc not from a personal speaker but from the stars themselves.
Scientific discoursc is arhetorical not merely because it is sty lis-
[0
FhelorJcality
tically sp.;UC, unencumbered by the figures of eloquence, but more
essentially because it incarn,ltcs a pragmatics that is entirely for-
eign to that of the hierarchized ,1nd relativizcd SOCi;11 Hdel. Inevita-
bly therefore once this discourse becomes culturally established,
it ({raws in it~ \"lake a severe critique of the doctrine, practice, ,md
institutions of rhetoric.
Such a critique gJins full voice in Dcscutes, the founder, it
is often said, of modern pbilosophy and a fascinated follower of
Gableo's ups and dm"lns. The autobiographical portion of the Dis-
course on lvlethod unfolds;1 conversion narr;1tive that frees the in-
quiring mind-the flI" of Descartes's text-fron1 the errors and
confnsions of the past and opens up a futurity for the acquisition of
certain knowledge. Part of the aberrant past Descartes repudiates is
the institutionalization of knowledge as erudit.io and the tracli-
lional form of schooling, which, among other tbings, rested on the
teaching of rhetorical skills:
I esteemed Eloquence most highly and I was enamoured of Poesy, but I
thought that both were gifts of the mind rat~er than fruits of stl.1~ly.
Those who have the strongest power of reasolllng, dnd who most skJll-
fully arrange their thoughts in order to render. them clear ,mel intelli-
gible, have the best power of persuasion even if they can but sp.enk the
language of Lower Brittany <1l1d luve never learned RhetorIC. And
those who have the most delightful original ide,ls JOci \",ho know how
to express them with the maximum of style <lod suavity, \vould not
fail to be the best poets even if the art of Poetry were unknown to them.')
Note here that Descartes rejects as useless and empty not only the
doctrine and practice of rhctoric, but also the teaching of poetry as
., rhetorical skill. His notion that poetic talent and imagination
dwell solely within the inwardness of the subject anticipated by
""e hundred and fifty years the Romantic elimination of rhetoric
"I the basis of poetic theory. There is a reason ior this historical
I'folepsis: the Cartesian cogito inaugurated the subject-centered
philosophical and cultural discourse that would find its culmina-
t;;;j~ ii. n..O:;:TJ.~iLitic thGughi. (Kat"d.'S i.1al1scem.Ielnai sym:hesis oi'ap-
I"",[eption, Fiehte's self-positing Absolute Ego, Hegel's notion of
."hstance as subject). Perhaps we can grasp here the affinity be-
i wrcn the Enlightenment <lnd R01nantic destructions of rhetoric.
Illl' eogito, the unshakable foundation of ceruinty, genef<ltes at
'iIHT the impersonal or abstracted subject of science and the crc-
iliVV/ self-forming subject of R0111anticism. Once these subjective
1I
JOHN BENDER AN]) DAVID E. VJ/ELLHERY
functions took command over the field of discourse <Ind representa-
tiOIl, rhetoric could no longer maintain its cultufal predon1inancc.
Foundational subjectivity-be it the subiect as res cogitons or as
creative origin, as unique individual personality or ~lS disinterested
free agent within the political sphcrc~erodcs the ideological prem-
ises of rhetoric.
The transfonnations V·le have been describing with reference to
GaWeo and Descartes had, by the mid-eighteenth century, ex-
tended beyond the reaches of speculative thought into the daily
conduct of affairs temporal and spiritual. In Eng1Jnd, for example,
not only had legal theorists increasingly embraced probabilistic,
broadly Cartesian thinking about questions of proof, but trial courts
were also making practical changes, such as the adluission of coun-
sel for the defense, that presaged the development of those imper-
sonal rules of evidence and consistently specified burdens of proof
that distinguish modern criminal procedure. Previously, the En-
glish criminal trial had been what Sir Thomas Smith once called
an "altercation./I Accused and accuser confronted one another
personally, without benefit of counsel for the prosecution or de-
fense. judges, unhampered by rules, freely intervened. The parties
to the trial occupied rhetorical positions delineated in their own
words according to whatever structuring principles they might
choose to adopt. Evidence} too, was personal and rhetorically StruC~
tured since direct tcstin1011Y (including confession) was the chief
basis of proof. Circul11stantial evidence, including even inference
based upon physical fact, was not fully probative. By the eigh-
teenth century, legal theorists already had begun to embrace the
kind of thinking that would lead nineteenth-century jurists actu-
ally to prefer circumstantial and inferential evidence over direct
testimony. Increasingly, from the mid-eighteenth through the
nineteenth centuries, English trials changed frOIn personal, rhe-
torically governed exchanges to procedures in which plant iff, de-
fendant; judge: and counsel occupied impersonal: rule-governed
positions. We still think of trials as places for high rhetoric, but the
ancient forensic speech in fact holds little more than a residual
place in the lnndern Anglo-American trial, ahnost as if to validate
our exacting, in1personal trial procedures by the token inclusion of
symbolic gestures that connect contemporary juridical practice
with a venerable tradition. Precisely because they arc rhctoricat
the 1110dern counsel's opening ~lnd closing statements (so signifi-
12
PhetOlkality
cant in courtroom mdodramaj arc not structural features of the
modern trial. iiJ
Interestingly, as Alexander Welsh has shown, the discourses
of law and natural religIOn embraced virtually Identical forms of
probabilistic thinking during the period \vhen the changes just de-
scribed werc occurring in trial procedure. "Matters of religion and of
the spirit bccame subject to impersonal categories of proof. If, says
Bishop Butler, we conduct every other aspect of our lives on the
basis of probable inference, as in the wake of scientific clupiricisru
perforce we must, why should we not found upon inference a belief
in God as secure as our confidence in the existence of nlatter or of
our own personal being? Is inference frOln circumstance not 1110re
persuasive than personal testimony of miraculous experience or
scriptural revelation? ii
These arhetorical tendencies in science, philosophy, religion,
,l1ld law can be taken as emblematic of the Enlightenment as a
whole. They bespeak a general movement toward representational
flcutrality that could be traced as well in such <1onlains as theory of
government, historiography, and psychology. In all these areas, es-
pecially across the eighteenth century, a nlodel of critical C0I11nlU-
lIication emerged that stresses the neutrality and transparency of
<,hscourse and that, in consequence, throv.,s off the rhetorical tradi-
lion. Discourse in the Enlightennlcnt, we ll1ight say with Michel
hJlICault, took on a ne\\' existence. The effects of this ruassive cul-
""ill transformation can still be felt today. The thinkers of the En-
Il.l~htennlent, however, not only practiced this new discourse, but
..1';0 developed its theory, a theory that in many eases coincided
with the conception of Enlightenment itself. We h'Ive already men-
"""cd Descartes, whose philosophy served as the foundation of the
lll';t major antirhetorical theory of language, the Port-Royal Logic
"I Arnauld and Nicole. In England, the temporal threshold is drawn
"'ocwhat later. Hobbes, the last great philosopher of absolutism,
; (!llld still, despite his indebtedness to Descartes. COll1nose an Art
'i l\hetorick whose every page reve<.l1s itself tribu'tary t~ the classi~
II t raditiOll. 12
rhis was no longer possible, however, for Locke. Not only docs
il" I()unoer of modern el11piricism unleash, in the fourth book
( )ll .'Nords".! of his E:,;.<.;(!y Concerning Hunwn Understanding,
"II" (II the 1110st virulent antirhetorical tirades on record, he also
1'1, ':nl(S there a "ser11iotics," or theory of langU<.lgc as sign, that is
I]
 JOHN BENDER AND DAVID E. WELLBEIZY
designed to e1inlinatc the deceptions of rhetoric and to guarantee
the transparency of discourse. Locke's v...'as not the first but cer-
Habermas!? tainly one of the most influential in a long series of attcrnpts to
free language and thought from the eonfoundments of rhetoric. In
Maybe he
was later Gcrnlany, the Enlightenment ideal of linguistic transparency, of
a purely neutral representational rncdium, cl11erged in Lcibniz's
ah, the culprit!
project of an (lrs chalilcLeris!.ico, a philosophical calculus that
I think part of would leave the deflections of hmn,ll1 language behind in order to
the response reproduce the language of things thCl11Sel yes. This orean1, which in
to this a variety of forms obsessed the entire eighteenth century, perhaps
most fully exemplifies the removal of discourse from what we
discourse is
referred to above as the rhetorical fray. For, as Leibniz and later
responsible
Herder well understood, such a perfected sign system would co-
for incide exactly with the absolutely nonpositional mind of God.
suppressing Kant brought together the theory of Enlightenment and the
the many form theory of discourse. Enlightenrnent, in Kant;s view, is a process of
critical communication that unfolds within a free public sphere, a
of literacy
sphere of discourse separated from the particularist interests and
we're trying to
pressures of political and religious institutions and authority. Here
once again the subject speaks (more accurately, wfltes and publishes) as a
validate... "scholar," a free inquirer whose only guide is the light of impartial
rcason and wliose addressee is the ideal person "mankind." Within
this sphere/ ideas arc circulated and subnlittcd to criticislD, to a kind
of winnowing process that removes the chaff of error and in the end
leaves nothing but the golden wheat of truth. Kant envisioned, in
fact, a kind of intellectual market, but no longer the market of false
opinion, varying whims, delusions, and conflicts in 'Nhich the
Sophists and rhetorici;ms were thought to perform their manipula-
tions. Rather, this is the marketplace of Adam Smith, ordered by
an invisible hand that inevitably makes the right selections, or, as
in Kant, ordered by a transcendental reason that is cvcryones and
no one/s: that is position less and therefore arhctorical. J.}
The vehiele that carried Kant's public sphere toward its future
_ t ._ ,. '.' .. '
,I', ' .,1 ',' . . ~ , ,. • "
V1 pUpt.:LUCi1 lU1jJlUVt:UlCIlL was lue U1SUtUU0l1 or puollsnlng, WltD-
out which Enlightenment is unthinkable. One necd only consider
the great publishing enterprises of the period-foremost of all per-
haps the Encyclopedic of d'Alcmbert and Diderot-or the expan-
sion of literacy that occurred across the eIghteenth century, with
its proliferation not only of books but of learned and moral jotJr-
J<hct orjca hl y
naIs.": Pr':lctical and theoretical knO\vkdgc, not to speak of litcra-
nne, wcrc no longer tied to a situation of oratorical exchange,
no longer simulated the scene of face-tn-face contact. Frorn lnid-
century on print esulbJished itself as the dOlninant medium of
linguistic communication, reading became the passion of the age,
and publishing statistics for the first time caught up with and sur-
passed tl:e post-Gutenberg boom of the sixteenth century. This is
,1l1other feature of Enlightenment that caused rhetoric's dernisc, for
rll,:toric took its point of depMture from the direct and oral encoun-
tcrs-ofclassical civic lTIC~~'1-lloe'vci1aSlt01:~it1tai~leditseIL;~-l~oss th;·
manuscript cuhtlrc ,iTtEe Middle Ages and into the Hrst phase of
modern print culture; it inevitably referred back to a face-to-face
oratorical situation. All this disappeared with the Enlightenment,
the first epoch to constitute itself as a culture of print. Rhetoric
drowned in a sca of ink.
What the Enlightenment accomplished in the dOlnains of theo-
retical and practical discourse, Rornanticisnl achieved in the aes-
thetic domain. Only with Romanticism was rhetoric finally ;md
i horoughly evacuated from the realn1 of imaginative expression. In
If
Llet, this very phrclse- imaginative exprcssion/l-reveals the in1-
!';let of the Romantic revolution. Prior to the last decades of the
";ghteenth ccntury, the concept of literature covered virtually all of
writing; the breadth of its application was Inade possible by the
o\'crriding unity of rhetoric,J! doctrine, which governed all of verbal
production. With Ronlanticisl11, however, the concept of literature
"Iunged that still today shapes the organization of disciplincs
within the university. Literature bccanle ilnaginative literature/ an
.lutonomous field of discourse endowed with its unique inner laws
.1I1d history. is Romanticism, in other words; set the paradignl for
lIlt' postrhetorical production, interpretation; and historiography of
[llCratlnC, and in this sense brought on the second death of rhetoric.
One consequence of this cultural transformation is legible in
Ililst Robert Curtius's elegiac lnonunlent, European Literature
",./ II,,, T ..--.f;.~ Atf;,JAI .. 11._ .... ,(, ...,.~1. ,. . . 1,1, . .C . ,
lHt.: cwuuI,ile sysrcnl or tOpOI tll1S
. ,
" " " ' ' ' ' ' ' ...... ~'.' ..A" LH:U~<"..;. n,,>c,).
1ll!llk descnbes (lId not fall into desuetude/ as Curtius notes, until
iiI<' last third of the eighteenth century. In other words, the evaeU;l-
11\111 I1'01n cultur~I n1e111ory of the topoi-those dense and finely
!q;lllchcd semantIC clusters that had since antiquity governed dis-
'lll~;IVC invention-coincided exactly with the clnergcnce of Ro-
1 5
 !C)IIN BENDER AND DAVID E, \VELLBER'r'
m<ll1ticiSI11. The ROll1e1lltiC destruction of rhetoric altered the tem-
poral framework of literary production, replacing rClneJ110rativc
birth of the
conservation (traditio) with an insistence on originality.
author This shift ccm be delineated in other ways. One major Roman-
tic innovation WelS the full articulation of the concept of "author"
as the productive origin of the text, as the subjective source that, in
bringing, its unique position to expression, constitutes a "work" in-
eluctably its own. Subjectivity and not adherence to a generic type
or reference to an esteelned predecessor or topiccll paradign1 now
gave a work its identity. This insistence on the principle of author-
ship-still today one of the n10st cOInpelling assUlnptions of liter-
ary studies and the very organizing principle of our libraries-docs
not flow mercly from the nature of things. As Foucault has sug-
gested in a powerful essay, authorship is a function, one that varies
what both historically and among disciplines. Romanticism produced
happened to the author function in its nl0dern forn1.j~
Legal history makes this perfectly clear. The English Copyright
the whole
Law of 1709 still did not protect the author against reproduction of
parallel his work. Its point of reference was thc book itself, ovcr which it
structure of gave the first publisher C0l11lnand for fourteen years /a lin1itation of
architecture previous practice] and the author for twcnty~eightJ the S,Hne dura-
thing? tion as for a patent. The practice of royal privilcges still remained
C0111n10n, and the universities held onto certain special CXCInp-
tions. Only in 1774, after a tangled history of legal disputes, did the
author receive an exclusive right over his \''.101'k. In 1814 this au~
thorial right was specified as holding for e1 period of twenty-eight
ycars after first publication or, should the author outlive this dura-
tion, until the end of his life. 1n France, the old system of royal
privileges and permissions held until the Revolution. Then, in its
meeting of July 19, 1793, the National Assembly granted exclusive
rights over reproduction to the authors themselves. This right hcld
until ten years <lfter the author's death. Finally, in the German-
speaking countries the Universal Prussian National Lmv of 1794,
which instituted fronl above so Illanv of the reforms thM in Fnlnc('
had come into being with thc Revoltltion, based the right of publica-
tion in a contract between author and publisher, with the publishcr-
seller, however, still the most in1portant figure. Only in 1810/ with
the National Law of Baden, was the author finally accorded ex-
clusive rights over 1/his" work. As these dates reveal, the years ar~
rayed around the turn of the nineteenth ccntury witncssed thc full
16
I<helorico!it y
emergence of the author as the decisive factor in elssigning propri-
etary status to printed 1angu.agc. This legal transforn1<ltion is one
institutional counterpart to the ROInantic rcconceptua1iz<1tlol1 of
1i terature_ I ~
The s.nnlC period revised educational practices bearing on litCr<l-
ture. The Latin schools that had el11crgcd across post-Renaissance reproduce
Europe initiated their pupils into discourse by leading theln through the
the rhetorical constructions of exemplary classical texts. This edu-
masters
c:ltion culminated with imitative cxercises in which the student
produced speeches and poen1s in the manner of one of the great aU- and all
Ihorities. But by the end of tbe eighteenth century this rhetorical that crap
pedagogy WJ,s experienced as moribund. Reviewing a treatisc on
Ihe cultivation of taste in the public schools, the young Goethe,
destined to beconle onc of the major figures of European Ronlan-
lieisnl, wrote in 1772: "\,\1C, however, hate all the imiteltion that
rhe author recOlnmcnc1s at the end. We know there are lnany whose
\L1im to fanle is that they write like Cicero or Tacitus, but it a1-
W:lyS derl10nstrates a lack of genius when they fall into this rnisfor-
lIllIe." 19 Genius is the vital term here, the na111e of subjective origi- I guess that
ILtlity and the antithesis of rhetorical invenlio. Gocthes cOD1plaint conflict was
W;lS soon to see results elS new nlcthods of pedagogy entered the played out
><("lIools, 111cthods that sought to disclose and cultivate the personal within the
Illliqueness of the pupils by tcaching tlfree" expression. The D1C-
movement
,lllllll of this expression was no longer the public oratorical pcrfor~
nlJ!lce in which the pupil demonstrated his mastery of standard
too
krhlliques, but rather <l written product th~H articulated his own
wdlviclua1 point of vie\v. .'D A similar change occurred in the univcr- Expressivis
"",·S. Whercas the study of the classical authors had traditionally m!
illl';lllt rnemorizing, translating, ,l!ld inlitating the loci clelSsici, the
'''IV discipline of philology cncouraged an interpretive grasp of the
illllll;lting authorial intention oUt of which thc entire work was
1\I'ldllced. These acadclnic institutes of philology, the most fcunous
,I which was establishcd by Christian Gottlob Heyne at the Uni-
',';-;:"fy c;f Gb~tirlgCi-t Ji..iriilg the 1! 10'';,;, institutionalized Romantic
liCIIlH'l1cutics as the D1Cthodoiogy of lnodern literary undcrstand-
iill', Sillce then literary educeltion has lent support to the antinorny
h I \\,('CI) creeltive self-expression on the one hand and interpret,l-
21
\!tiil Oil the other.
~ )1 course, the Enlightennlcnt had <llready begun to dismantlc
iliiHllic<l1 doctrine as the organizing matrix of literary production.
17
rOIlN BENDER AND DAVID E, \VELLBERY
On the level of theory the late Enlightenment witnessed the birth
of philosophical aesthetics, a discipline whose emergence mJrkcd a
decisive cultural relocation of art and literature, Alexander Baum-
,l.';arten's Aesthet ieo \ I 750-' S sL the foundational treatise of thc nc\".'
discipline, was still based on the traditional rhe1'oric11 tricHJ of ill-
vell!io, dispositio/ and elocutio, but one nevertheless notes a shift
in the significclncc of the terms. Aesthetics is not a theory of the
production of effective or persuasive discourse; it is ~l theory of
"sensate cognitions'! and of the signs that convey them, Its franK
of reference is not a notion of social interaction within <1 hierarchi-
cal space, but the soul conceived as a faculty of representation. Art
retreats frOIn the cour et ville of aristocratic society and takes up
residence within the mental immanence of a universalized "man-
kind."" As Michael Fried has shown, a similar development took
place i,n French painting and art criticisI1l during the saIne period:
the shIft frODl a paradignl of "theatricality'! to OIle of "clbsorption lf
amounted to a derhetorizatioI1, an abandonment of oratorical ges-
turality.B Final1y, at the brink of Romanticism, Kant made the ob-
solescence of rhetoric explicit, banishing it in a famous paragraph
of his Critique of Judgement not only from poetry but also hom
the legal courts, the chambers of government, and the pulpits of
th,c church, His condenlnation of rhetoric so thoroughly epito-
mIzes the developnlents we have tried to sketch here that it is
worth citing it at length:
Rhctor~c, iI? so far ,as ~hi~ means ,the <1ft of persuasioll, i,e. of deceiving
by a beautIful show lars ow/ona), and not mere deg,Clnce ot speech
(eloqucnc,e and stylel, is ~l diJl,cctic which bor[()\vs from poetry only so
mucl~ as IS ne~dful to WIn mmJs to the side of the oratOr bdofe they
have rormcd <l Judgement and to deprive them of their freedom; it can-
not therefore be recommended either for the 13v,1 courts or for the
pulpit. For if \Ve arc dealing with civil law, with the rights of individ-
ua.l persons, or with Llsting instruction and determillntion of people's
111lnds to an ,lecurate knowledge <lnd ;) conscientious observance of
their duty, it is unworthy of so important a business to allow a tr<lce of
any l.uxurial1ce of Wit, and iI11!1gin:ninn tn :1pr(~:1r, ::!:d s~E! !(:.:;.:; ::'~1Y ,
trace of the art of t3lkmg people over and of captivating them for the
adva,nt<lge of ,my chancc person, For although this art milY sometimes
b,c duccted to l~gltil~ate Jnd praiseworthy dcsigns, it becomes objcc-
tlOl~<lbl: whe? 111 thIS way maxims ,and dispositions ,arc spoiled in ,1
sU,b/cctlvc POlIlt of view, though the action In;]Y obiectively be i<l\'\'ful.
It IS not enough to do wlwt is right; we should practice it solely on the
ground that it is right. 1 ':
18
J<he t oriel! lity
Kant's Crj/j(jue of Judgenwn! not only assembles in this passage
and elsewhere the accusatory rnotifs typical of al! antirhctorical
polcn1ics (deception, unfrccdom, luxuriant excess, demagogic lDcl-
nipulationL it also clcarly' reveals why rhetoric becomes irrelevant
to the literary arts, For <ut, in Kant's viev,/, has its source in genius,
in the subjective instance of creativity that derives thc rules of its
productive action not from any cultural code, but froln nature it-
self (Critique of Judgement, pp. r 50- 5 I). This attachment of ,nt to
expressive subjectivity !cd directly into the Romantic rcconcep-
tualization of the "esthetic, after which rhetonc lost its centrality
to the production and interpretation of poetry. In Descartes ini-
tially, and then in Kant and the Romantics, we find this rule every-
where confirmed: the insistence on the originating power of sub-
iectivity is incompatible with rhetorical doctrine, This is why
ROIllanticism represents thc final destruction of the classical rhe-
torical trac!ition.
Indicative literary genres appeared in tanden1 with charac-
teristic refusals of rhetoric during the Enlightenment and ROn1Jn-
lic stages even though the rhetorical model of production con-
I inned to prevail in officially sanctioned literature throughout the
seventeenth and well into the eighteenth centuries, However, both
! he seenling inability of European wri ters to sustain the ancient
ICidition of epic poetry (except through translation and mock he-
l\lic) and! during the Enlightenment, a relative decline of lyric po-
I,'! ry in favor of satire ,lnd didactic-descriptive verse (those closest
1\1 prose aInong traditional forms) evince the incursion of prosaic
l:ltiollalism,
The eighteenth-century cl11ergence of the extra-official IIncwfl
IlllVcl is still more significant. The novel is the genre of writing par
'''Tllence. As Mikhail Bakhtin argues, all of the traditional Jiter-
II v genres, /for in any case their defining features, arc considerably
tllder than \vrittcn bnguage and the book, and to thc present day
1II('y rctain their ancient oral and auditory chnracteristics. Of all
d~~: !!l:ljCY gCrlYCS 81-:1)' tl-:c :;1;:-;\"d is YOiioger th"liJ. wi:iLli'lb <:lllJ tlIt:
!i\ldle it alone is organically receptive to new forms of mute perccp-
iBlll, that is, to reading,II,~,,- Even if Bakhtin ovcrstates the casc-
i'vel} if residues of orality may be found in certain earlier nove1s-
j IH' marked consolidation during the later eighteenth century of a
11l1\Tlistic technique such as frcc indirect discourse (style indirect
(,hi'), \"./hich has no counterpart outside of written narrative , vali-
19
 JOHN BENDE!~ ANi) l)j-\VID L WELLBERY
dates for our period the point ;:lbOlIt rc.ading .:lIld mute pcrccpti(ll1:~"
The novel's peculiar gwviu1tion toward a neutn:l1 tmnsp<lrency of
style (the opposite of rhetorical overcoding) participates in the
genre's conventional pretense to reportorial clCcuracy ot the kind
possible only in writing. In other respects as \'vdl the eightccnth-
century novel operates within the Enlightenment model of critical
comlnunicJtion. The novels of Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding, for
example, not only pretend to offer densely particular, vIrtually evi-
dentiary accounts of the physical and n1cntal CirCllIl1stances that
actuate their characters and motivate the causal sequences of their
plots, but also attcmpt, \'lith greater or lesser consistency, to frame
the subjectivity of their characters within editorial i,Ddoe and
Richardson) or narTiltorial (Fielding) objectivity. In POint of both
thclnatic exposition and narr~ltivc strategy, these novels force rC<ld-
ers into the position of neutral observers arriving, probabilistically,
at judgments based upon available facts ,md reasonable inferences.
Although these novels in tfuth continue to echo plot forms and in-
cidents tradition,l1 to the fantastical rOlnanccs their prefaces ritu-
ally condenln, the concern expressed by these novelists to distin-
guish theiT enterprise from that of earlier prose fiction mdicatcs
fronl our point of view the urgent significance of the generic refor-
Il1ulation then in progress.
If the el11crgcnt novel dCIl1<:1rCatcs a generic space within which
the impersonality of the runc/ern subject position Inay be exercised,
the Romantic lyric exhibits the creative, self-fonning aspect of the
subject. Though the novclls opposite in so many other respects, the
genre of the Romantic lyric not only shares the novd's usc of natu-
ral, unadorned language, but also aggressively deprecates rhetorical
why? speech as disingenuous. The earlier lyric tradition had displayed
the ancient rhetorical fonns of praise and blame, as well as the
how?
schemes <md tropes designed to persuade a particular kind of per-
son, in sonle specified situation, to act in son1e precise way. The
Romantic lyric affirms individual personal identity by delineating
a specific cpiphanic monlCnt in the history of <1 single s[w;:JkinE
subject. Some of the most remarkable exaInplcs go so Lu as to
efface entirely the scene of rhetorical speech by incorporating into
the lyric another equally specific subject who uniquely shares the
epiphany. Wordsworth's TiIltern Abbey places his sister Dorothy in
this empathetic role, while Coleridge'S This Lirne Tree Bower .A1y
Prison reflects upon a specific occasion when the absence of friends
20
Phe!oricality
provoked IllediUtio!1s that might have b<.:cn shared hut \vo,l.dd~ of
course h,lvc been {Iltcrcd had the friends been present. Sundar
develo~.1Inents C<lIl be traced on the Continent,. whcr~, ,IS i~l EI:-
gland, the model of folk poetry became the chid paralhgm of lytle
song. Already in the 1770'S the young Goethe Iud begu.11 to. p.roduce
lyric texts that cle{lve to the inner nlovemcnts of sulw.::ctlvIty and
that redefine orality as the. inner voice of emotion r,lthcr than <IS
public-oriented oratorical conlr11unicatinn. Th~ lyrics of C~octhe
;md his rOlTI<"mtic successors arc, in fact, a kll1d 01 vcrb"l1 n1U$IC that
eventually could fuse sC;lmlcssly with the melodies of Schubert,
Schumann, and Wolf.
ROInanticisl1l brought with it one final cultural tranSfornlation
that worked to institutionalize the devoluttOn of rhewric. The rhe-
torical paradiglll was international in c!1;u;lcter, tied to the Latin
language, which dominated the higher schools and universities
throughout Europe, and to the eLlssieal treatises and authorities
t1l<lt enjoyed universal recognition. Rhetoric W;l$ the foundatIon of
;111 international intellectual community, the res pu.blica litteroria,
,lIld the vchicle of a unified tradition. This quintessentially inter-
ll:ltional character of classical rhetoric came to an end in the period
\)j Romanticism because the Romantic destruction of rhetoric was
linked to the rise of the Il10dern natiol1*state. Nation;:ll identity was
"[{lunded in the linauistic
'" ,., identity of the Vol!, , the national lan-
v.U;lges replaced the international Latin koine, cutting off civic and
ndtural consciousness from its ROInan roots. The universality of
I Ill,' res publica litte!{}[ja was shattered by the proliferation of ver-
Il.,eular reading publics, llI1d the classie;11 IriJdiUo ceded its preemi-
nellCe to national historical traditions.:' Perhaps the anxious teni-
ll'llalisnl so COlnInon today in university der<lrtmcnts of literary
-:Hldy is a last desperate defensc of the Romantic organization of
!I" .. world of letters along national historical lines.
The linguistic character of the nation-state worked to bring on
il l1 · ~~nd of rhetoric, but an equally iInportant bcwr \\'as the politi~
. d: Slilicture-tne form of sovereignty and poiitlcal p;lrticii)<Hion-
tlLll the nation-state developed. Within the context of national
'i';1(; organization rhetorical perfonu<lI1ce \vas restricted to special-
i '\,\1 legislative venues and ceremonial OCC<lSlOns. Citizenship carne
Ii, l\'sidc in the relation of an individual to a collectively vl/illed
i,,,dy of taw; goverI1Il1cntal participation and legal puctice becaIne
i'!.dl'~;sionalizedand increasing.ly print-bound j and the scene of po-
2 I
 JOHN gEi\'j)E!~ :\ND DAVIt) E. WELLBEJ{Y
litica! action, which had previously possessed the concrete reality
of;) forum or COLIrt was dispersed. The citizen, thoroughly' pri-
l
vatized, was thus no longer distinguished by orattHical talc:nt, ~lS
his Roman ancestor had been, and therefore no longer required rhc-
wriGd tI"<lining. The nation-state is not a sphere of face-to-bee en-
counter, but an ideal entity to which one relates abstractly through
the internalization of its laws <:l1ld concretely through its vaflOUS
burcaucr<ltic apparatuses.
The Modemisl RelUm of Rheloric: A Thesis
Such v.. .-cre the Inanifold dcvclopu1cnts th;:lt, during the En-
lightenment and R01nanticism, brought the CL1Ssic;.ll tradltion of
rhetoric to its end. Our procedure in sketching these developlnents
h"s been to highlight individual cases and local events exemplify-
ing the fact of rhetorlc's demise, But these particular instances Jlso
have opened a view onto structural features of bourgeois culture
that dethroned rhetoric from its posltion of supn_'I11,1C)' much as
the French Revolution dethroned the king "s the symbol of tradi-
tional hicI<lrchicJI order in European society. In other words, our
historical narrative hob led us to fonnulatc a thesis specifying the
constellation of' forces that brought about rhetoric's end. Reversing
the Kantian formula, we 11B)' call these ideological <.lI1d institu-
tional forces the conditions of inlpossibiiity of rhetoric: cultural
presuppositions that, by relocating and reshaping discourse \vithin
society rendered the traditional practice and doctrine of rhetoric
obsolete. Five bctors seem especially prominent:
1. "Transparency" <1nd "neutrality" cn1crged ,15 the 1c<1ding
) values of theoretical and pr<lctical discourse-scientif-ic discourse
beelIne anchored in "objectivity."
2. The values of "authorship!' and "individual expression!'
came to dcf"il1e the literary dOln<.lin~in1;:lginativediscourse became
I
!
anchored in "subjectlvity."
,} l.-!b'.:.'r:~! p()!itic<ll JiSC(iUU;il.; elnerged as the language of com-
mun<ll exchange.
4· The oratorical Inodc1 of conl1nunication W~IS replaced by
I
, print and publishing-Europe was alphabetized.
:;. The nation-state bcc~lIne the central political unit, and SUn-
\ dardized national languages clncrged as the linguistic sphere of ref-
i\ erence for cuI tural production and underst;lI1ding.
lU Ie t o!"jCtl/j ty
\Vhcrc thc:-ic conditions obt,lin, rhetoric c,'.IIl.,~:~.<;~l?L...9x!lx.lJ~e _
placc.-(-)r--:('i3~~'~nQf~.~r.!~1,I~~1.<.:h~9!~.rstlC;.... ~.n<.r!:i"1:llilJizc.d",prauic-.ct~DLA­
dusty acadcmic.~rc<.:i,dization. Once it becomes estranged fran1
hot11 cultural prodticti<'JI"-i-aiiX-ti1c I110St advanced forms of inquiry,
;lssociatioIlS of mendacity, empty scholasticism, ill1d false ~udul­
ness atl<1ch themselves to its name. And this is \l,'h::11 the Enlighten-
ment and RomanticisI11 accon1plished: they altered the conditions
of discursive action along the lines of the five tendencies listed
here and thereby rendered irrelevant the rhetorical tradition that
lwcl for centuries been the organizing n1~ltrix of c0l111nunication in
Europe.
But rhetoric has returned. Throughout the course of this ccn-
lury it has acquired renc\\lcd theoretical and practiull importance,
,lld n10re recently it has bCC0l11C an explicit focus of inquiry in a
V;I riety of domains. How is this possible? How (;In rhetoric rcturn
:dler having been so thoroughly displ<lced from our cultural hori-
'on? We contend centrally, that this repetition of 0].£ rhetorical
l!aditioI1 within I~10dcrnisl11 C()n1cs'about when tilcfIve conditions right, dude,
()fn~c~EoiT~~~~I!iipQssibility_al:C-theIn~cl~0e~~~~Ei.~~?d.:-_,:hcna ~1C'W - cause
,"ltur,,1 and discursive space is fashioncdrhat is nOlonger defined those don't
Ily objectivism, subJcctivis1l1, liberalisnl, litcr~lcy, Jod nationalisI11.
exist
rill' modernist cultural transformatioI1, in other \II/ords, is accon1-
1'.II,icd by a return of rhetoric precisely because it explodes the cul- anymore...
Illr;d prcdOlninance of these five tendencies. From this perspective, sure.
llHlllcrnisD1 {construed as a broad sociocultural epoch) presents a
h'vcrse image of the antirhetorical cultural premises that iIlcrcas~
llll',ly organized the production of discoursc from the sevcnteenth
'{'llwryonward:
I. From the paradoxes of Heisenberg and Ceidel to the de-
ili'JliO!1 of truth in the epistemology of Nelson Goodlnan, modern-
I""
·.lI' witnessed the crumbling of the ideal of scientific objectivity
III'! lhe loss of faith in the neutr<l1ity of scientific imd practical dis-
, (1111~;(' MndC'!Tlis!Y!. !~{) 1D1~gG' posscsses :, idLtlJh; ~lalluard of repl'e-
'n!;ltional transparency; even so-called observation sentences arc
1< {I),l',nized as theory-Llden; <lnd the history of science itself has
really? this
seems
"IIIC to be viewed less as <l progressive discovery of the facts than almost
.1 ;;nies of constructions accornplishcd within the fUlmcwork of
opposite of
" '\'I"lll i ng conceptual paradigms.
'. Modernism has erodcd as well the v,lluc of !ounding subjec-
the
"~, lly, which, starting from Descartes and continuing through Ro- modernism i
know
2)
 JOHN BENJ)[lZ AND DAVID E. \VEl.Lf)ERY
J11anticisJl1, had contributed so pc)\verfully to the decline of rheto-
ric. from g~ludc1~lirc's relegation of authorship to an ~l11achronisn1
and M'.lllarmC's c1imin<Hion frorn poetic writing: of the elocution-
ary subject to the autOlnatic writing of the surrc~llists, the willed
anonyn1Jty of Kafka, Beckett, ,md Bbnehot, and the collective com-
positions of the Rcng:a poets, mouernist liter<uy production has dis-
is suppose mantled the val ues of individual authorship and creati vi ty. Freudian
psychoanalysis has decentered the subject, \vhilc disciplines such
this is
as linguistics and sociology have disclosed impersonal patterns and
modernism... forces at work in human agency. Far from forming .:1 \'l/orld out of
but then this itself, the rnodernist subject, as Hcidcgger suggests, is "thrown"
Heideggar ~nto the world, split by an altcrity that can never be recuperated
thing seems l!lto <l homogeneous and sovereign self-m<lstery. Rimbaud's line is
emblcrnatic of this condition: "Ie est un Jutrc."
so not
3· l\1odernisrl1, arising in tandem with mass society and its
modern... i forms of exchange, explodes the liberal Enlightenment model of
think we communication, in which individual rational subjects contribute
need to go disinterestedly to political debate within the public sphere. 1n both
over some of the modern political arena and the rnodern marketplace rhetorical
these things manipulation bccon1es the rule. Advertising, marketing, propa-
gan.d~, ~lIld public rclations stir the cauldron of public opinion;
in class pohtres, as Walter Benjamin notcd, is aestheticized; and art, which
Romanticism had enclosed within its own aut0I1or110US sphere, be-
comes one discursive force an10ng others: impure, tendentious a
reflection on its O\\1n inadequacy.
this is far too 4· Modernism is marked by the dethroning of print. Of course
the graphic word continues to infiltrate the other ll1edia at innll~
clear cut, i
merablc points, yet we no longer live in the world of newspaper and
think- hook. Prir~t has given way to fHrn and television, to phonographic
intellectualis reprod~lctlOn and to the various fonns of tclccomn1ll11ication. Lit¥
m still lies in eI<_~C~1 far £rorn being the sole access to culture, is rnercly one form
print of Inionnation proccssing, and a highly restricted one at that.
s· Finally, modernism has destroyed the modcl of a national
language, \·\'hich had served ;1S th(? 51.!pcr'.'e::ii~}g fG:rill ~Jf Enlighten-
ment ,md Ronlantic cultural production <lnd self-undcrstandin<y.
no. E. The urbanisti.c nl<uketplace of the twentieth century is irreducibl;
O. polyglOltal; dra1ects, sociolects, and idiolects proliferate ,md clash.
dis.cipJ~nesdevelop and dwell within their respective jargons. Trans~
!atIOn 1$ the universal state of affairs. This dispersion of the na-
tional lJnguage, the language of the people, is accompanied by an
24
Iihel orlea!il y
unraveling of nation,d tradition: modernism fosters <lI1 inrush of
the archaic into the scene of culture, the shattering of the ide<l of
national uniqueness and of ~1l1 individual national history. The
(raDle of national culture, which had displaced the international-
ism of the rhctorical tradition, collapses.
These 1110dcrnist cultural tendencies have created, then, the
conditions for a rcnaiss<l!1cc of rhetoric, which today is asserting
Itself in all ficlds of intellectual endeavor ,md cultural production.
But the Ile\-\! rhetoric is no longer that of the clas$ic~ll traditioni it is
:lttuncd to the specific structures of modernist culturei its funda-
mental categories arc rl1arkedly new. Rhetoric today is neither a uni-
lied doctrine nor a coherent set of discursive practices. Rather, it is
" transdisciplinary field of practice and intellectual concern, a field
I hat draws on conceptual resources of a r<ldically heterogeneous
ll.:lture and docs not assume the stable shape of a systcln or n1cthod
oj education. The rhctoric that, with the ruin of Enlightenmcnt-
IZomantic culture, now incrcasin~ly asserts itself, shares with its
cbssical predecessor little more than a name.
Our historic~ll thesis lead~ us,tothis_J.;:oncJusion: A1odernis111 is
!Ill oge oot o[ rhetoric,JJ(;[IciT;j;etoricalil.v:thc age, that is, of.1 gell-
I'r;llized rhetoric that P-enetra~tes-t01hc-'c1ec~stlevels of hUlna11 ex¥
Iwrienee. The classical rhctorical ttadition r;lrified speech and fixed
II within a gridwork of linlitations: it was a rulc¥governed domain
whose procedures therllsclves were delimited by the institutions
' lil:lt organized interaction and domination in traditional European
'.l/cicty. RhetoricaIity by cOntr,lst, is bound to no specific set at in-
·.lltutions. It D1anifests the groundless, infinitely rarnifying charac-
In of discourse in the rnodern world. For this reason, it allows for
llU explanatory 111etac1iscourse that is not already itself rhetoric~d.
JUwloric is no longer the title of ,1 doctrine <lnd a practice, nor a
J<)llll of cuI tural IneI110rYi it becomes instead something like the
'll11dition of our existence.
We have proposed that the modernist return of rhetoric be con-
",vcd in relation to a complex set of historic<d factors. The soci~d,
'<1 lClltific, technological, and experiential formations of I1lodern
Jik have altered the conditions of discoursc. These formations arc
, "('xtensive with a cultural frame in which bnguage bcc01nes
dCLlched £rorn the supports created for it by the Enlightenment
Hid !\oI11anticisrn_ Rhetoricality names the new conditions of dis-
.• 'IIlSC in the modern world ~lncl, thus, the fundamental category
25
JOHr-..' BENDER AND DA"ID E. WELLlIERY
of every inquiry that seeks to describe the nature of discursive
action and exchange. Rhctoricality may be considered as ~ name
for the underlying features both of modern practice and of the theo-
ries that seek to account for it. In the modernist phase these struc-
tUfal features, on the whole, had to be inferred fronl sylnptomatic
soci.al, cultural, and disciplinmy phenomena. More recently, in
the episode-or epistcl11e--l1ow designated by the ttnn "post-
!11oclernism,JI new forms of rhetorical inquiry aTe enlerging that
explicitly recognize ,,111<.1 analyze features \\le designate under the
term "rhetoricality,/!
Nowhere is the modernist shift in the rneaning of rhetoric-
the shift from rhetoric to \\lh,n we arc calling rhctoricalitY-ITIore
forcefully evident than in Nietzsche, the paradigmatic philosopher
of n10dernity and postmodernity, Acutely aware of the condition of
language in lnass culturc; Nietzsche set the agenda for the n10dern-
ist reconceptualization of rhetoric and opened that general field
within which the diverse forms of rhetorical inquiry on the con-
ten1porary scene formulate their individual programs.
As.3 professor of classics <It the University of Basel, the young
Nietzsche oHered ,l course in rhetoric, which, as Philippe Lacoue-
Labarthe has shown, was of fundamental in1portance to his n1ature
thought." The early text by Nietzsche that sets the groundwork for
all his thinking about Ianguage-"On Truth and Lie in an Extra-
Moral Sense'l-insists especially on the essential rhetoricity of
language and on the human "drivc to forn1 111etaphors l l as the basis
of our rendering of the world. The inherited concept of figures of
speech here undergoes a decisive reinterpretation: the figuresyou
no longer devices of ~1l1 e/ocutjo that adorns and presents the in-
one you just gave?
vented thoughts of the speaker, but mobile, shifting categories that
arc always at work in every encounter \vith the world. During this
same early phase of his career Nietzsche developed the notion that
truth itself is the product of a cerulin "pathos," that it is an aHec·
tively invested figure ~lble to claim no legitimacy beyond the ur,
gf>l1<:y with which it is ::fB.!.·m.ed. This.cm:cept:"~.:111:18':e tc~~:·s th,,'
underpinnings from the notion of an arhctoricallanguage of obser
vation: the truth clainls of science, in Nietzsches reading, are
themselves merely one rhetoric <U110ng others.
The later Nietzsche promotes the category of "appearance"
(Schein) to univers.:tl status: appearance is not the opposite of truth,
hut rather includes truth as one of its varieties. Nietzsche's insi5
26
J<hCl o]"iu! I j 1)/
tence on the concept of power is sin1iIarly motivated: if all lan-
.\~uagc is rhetorical, if even objectivity is the product of a certain
strategy, then discourses are no longer to be nlcasured in tcrms of
[heir adequacy to an objective standard (which Nietzsche's pcr-
<;pectivism exposes as ;] myth) but rather to be ~lnalyzed in terms of
Iheir strategic placement within a clash of cOlupcting forces them·
'-:l'!ves constituted in <Uvj through the very rhetorical dissimula-
((Ons they elnploy. In this sense, Nietzsche's philosophy can he
,haracterized as the thought of a generalized rhetoricality, of a play
01 transfonnation .:ll1d dissinlulatioo, that is the condition of possi-
'"lity of truth and of subjectivity. Rhetoric returns in Nietzsche,
{Illt as a doctrine governing the production and analysis of texts,
nut as a procedure to be clnployed within specific situations to-
w;!nJ determinable ends, but rather as a kind of in1men10rial pro-
, ('·;5---·-an a priori that thought can never bring under its control
1'l<Tiscly because thought itself is one of the effects of that process.
It,lll,toric loses in Nietzsche its instrun1ental character :lnd be-
'llllll:S the nalnc for the rootlessness of our being,!-.J
Rhetoricolity and Contemporary Styles
of Knowledge: A Snrvey
"he ficld of inquiry that Nietzsche's thought discloses is at
" l l ' l· V;ISt and diverse, Its conceptual repertoire resists synopsis) fOT
d ,,"i t Yis as diHuse as modern knowledge itself. Thus, it would be
'jllIO()~-;sible to provide a precis of 11lodernist rhetoric such as that
arc meanL'llllCd
like theout for the classic,l1lO tradition with such precision ,Jnd
11llllllly by Roland Barthes.- And even an encyclopedic account
ill I'liled ,li ter Heinrich Laushergls conlpendious handbook of clas~
".I ,hermic would be incapable of absorbing contemporary rhe-
l
'! 11 ,il pLlctice into a sharply delineated structure: ! The best one
HI dll ;ll this point is to list SOlTIe of the major disciplinary ap-
'H Ill'S to rhetorical questions and to chart their congruences and
',j'
1\'.\ ih._I..'.;".
11/" Nnv khetorjc of Science. One of the Inost fascinating
It! cllntemporary rhetorical inquiry-although it docs not al-
)'.0 hy that name-is concerned with the discourse of the sci-
1\_'; \\'c have mentioned, the ideal of scientific objectivity,
',,,, \ d :1 Ilcutral and standpOint-free langu~lgc of description, has
,,;;; In ;111 ('Ild in the twentieth century, The last gasp of this ideal
27
aren't modernism and pomo at conflict precisely over this positivism? I attribute the
positivism of modernity more to the Enlightenment than pomo- in any case, how can they
be brought together under the rubric of rhetoricality when they are so at odds over the
JOHN BE1\.'J)E!i. ANI) DAVID E. \VELl.BEn.y
nature of truth and existance? In what ways are they using language/rhetoric similarly to
justify this conflation? I'm confused. Perh':lps ,lbovc all, Foucault's
waS in all likelihood the neoj1ositivist notion of the protocol sen-
tence! <l linguistic formulation that W<lS thought to present in prop-
ositional form the L.1W data generated by experiment. But the no-
tion did not hold up to scrutiny, and the ideal of neutrality was
dismantled from within the neopositivist school itself. The para-
digmatic instance of this turn in scientific meta theory is Th01nas
Kuhn's book The Structure of Scientific ReFolutiorJs·, written 3S a
contribution to the neopositivist-inspired Encyclopedia of Unified
Science.- n Despite the criticisln and controversy the book has en-
countered since its publication, Kuhn's basic argU111ent to the effect
that scientific inquiry rests on research paradign1s theI11selvcs not
derivable from observed data or £r0l11 axiomatic statcnlentS still
enjoys a general consensus. And Kuhn's historical approach has
spawned an entire body of research bearing on the exuascielltific
forces at work in the formation of scientific knowledge. For ex-
ample, in Against Method Paul Feyerabend, the prophetic voice of
anti~objectivism, reviews with extreme care the scientific work of
Galileo/ discovering there not the untarnished presentation of facts
but a complex strategic-rhetorical operation of persuasion ..l J In ~
similar, if less jubilantly radical vein, Ian Hacking has shown how
scientific instruments, far frcn11 being the neutral devices that
Galileo's telescope appeared to be, in fact participate in the °crea-
tion of phenomena," in what we could would like to call a sci en-
tific.iz?ventio.-l -: Finally~and still ren1aining within the postanalytic
tradItIOn-according to Nelson Goodn1cul!s Ways of '0/oI1dnw]{ing/
~o one world exists that we strive to represent as neutrally as pos-
sible, but rather there arc a host of world-versions, themselves
functions of divergent representational or symbolic systems.':;
In this plurality of worlds, rhetoric, albeit in a nonclassical ver-
sion, finds its place oncc again. At issue in this new fonn of meta-
scientific analysis is the essential rhetoricality of the scientific en-
terprise: its procedures of legitimation; its institutional context.
its dependence on overriding convictions or presuppositions on th~
p::Jrt of i1:s ~!!·,~f..::titiC'!~e!s.l(' The s<".:.wc interest Ii} di.(:i.0i.ic~tl.ii.y alsu
has penetrated the social and human sciences. Hayden White, for
example, has claborated a rhetoric of classical historiography thal
undermines any claims of impartiality and objectivity that disci~
plme might pTOtleL" Likewise, Clifford Gcertz has examined the
production of anthropological knowledge as an intrinsically rhe-
toncal operation and his explorations will soon be followed by
others th:tt explore the rhetoric of neighboring human sc:ienel's ..;;,
28
RIle t orjca] i ty
\,\,()fk, with its insistence on both the
institutional crnhcddedness and th(; cultural productivity of
discourses, sets the standard for any inquiry th.:lt seeks to by bare
the rhetoricality of \vhat we anachronistically call our positive
koowledge.
Rhetoric ond Modern Linguistics. The Romantic concept of
1:1I1guage essentially banned rhetoric from the Hcld of language
>;tudy, replacing it with stylistics conceived as the .:malysis of indi-
vidual or national expressive fonns. Indeed, if we recall the work
III the last great avatars of Romantic linguistics, the nco-idealists
( :harles Bally and Karl Vossler, it becomes clear that stylistics is
not merely a branch of Romantic language study, but rather its cul-
Illlnation. \Vith the Saussurean breakthrough, a return of rhetori-
,-;11 analysis became possible, and once again this return of the rhe-
torical tradition assumed the fornl of a differential repetition.
No doubt the privileged-the most famous and influential-
',"e of this return is Roman jakobson's 1956 article "Two Aspects
"I Langll<lge and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances."" What ja-
l.ohson accomplished in this piece can be described as a reorgani-
.1 (ion of the rhetorical field, or, to be precise, of the rhetorical
IIhficld traditionally denoted elocutio. By using the term "reorga-
111.'_:lti0!1" we want to crnphasize the idea of creative change and
Il.Illsformation, the idea of a reconstitution of the object of rhe-
,""cal study. How docs this oceur? Through the projection of the
11\·.l~()rical pair paradigln/synt<lgm £rorn post~Saussurean linguis-
I henry (Saussure himself used the tefIll lIassociation'J rather
I i'
i !I,lll "paradigln") onto the domain of the rhetoric.1l flgurcs. And
illlT the tenns of this categorical pair are juxtaposed within struc-
:111.11 ist theory as are "similarity" and /'contiguity," the projec-
i I. III }'ldds within the rhetorical dOlnain a fundamental bifurcation
"1,, two sClllantic-figural processes, operating along the paths of
i~11lLlllty relations on the one hand and contiguity relations on
ili,- IltlltT. In Jakobson's ternlinology, these processes carry the
,H',,·';, L~!~""l.ili.:l.r £rCll1 the rheto;:ical t~'«ditiG;:l, Cof "iT~ClclpLul ai.iJ
;Hll\lllymy." Thus, a powerful hon10logy cnlcrges into view: in
\1<- ..!\flluln of language "paradign1ati c l! is to /fsyntagln.JticlJ as
,; i Ill' domain of sen1antic-discursive processes "tnctaphor" is to
Hi\ljlll~!Jny."
).1 k\ Ihson/s homology has engendered various confusions, among
Ii· III lh:lt the terms (/IDetaphor" and "metonymy," 3$ be uses
l,; Ill, .lll· held to be equiv<llent to those saInc terIns \vithin the rhe-
 JOHN gENDER AND DAVID F.. V..: ELLBERY
toriud tradition, This is clearly not the case. \Vithin the tLlditlorl<ll
doctrine of e]ocuUo, metaphor .::lnd 111ctoll)llny arc two figures
among ~l host of others; they <ltc, we might say, particularistical!y
conceived, pertaining to individual instances of discourse. Jakoh-
son mcans sOlnething quite different: for hil11 the tenns designatc
t\\'o (and, in his vie\v, the only two) general processes of semantic
production; they arc class terms that subsume the entire Held of
the traditionally defined figures, dividing it into t\VO basic groups,
Thus, when Jakobson suggests that Romanticism and SymbolisIl1
arc predominantly metaphorical, RcaliSIl1 predominantly met-
ony111ical, he is not saying that in these literary J110Vel11ents either
metaphors or metonymies arc exclusively llsed, but rather th<1t the
Lnge-scale tendencies of sel1laI1tic production within these nlOVC-
111ents fo11ov.,r the paths of similarity and contiguity respectively.
What we find in )akobson's inquiry, then, is a fundamental displace-
ment that affects the traditional tenninology of rhetoric, a gener-
alization of certain itC111S within that tenllinology and <1 wholesale
abandonrnent of other iterlls. Certain old rhetorical tenns have
Con1C to designate general processes that ~He at \\'ork, in their jux-
tapositional interplay! across the entire field of discourse, that arc
anterior to any instrumental choices a writer l11ight makc, and that
even govern such transindividual phenon1ena as thc succession of
period styles. Exactly this shift in the theoretical function and sig-
nificance of concepts is what we arc Gl1ling the rnove from rhetoric
to rhetoricality.
Of course, post-Saussurean linguistics has spawned efforts to
rethink in detail the utterly specific categories of traditional elo-
cutio. Two exarnplcs of this research program are the Nhetorique
generale of the Belgian Groupe mu, and Paolo Valesio's Novanti.
H
(/1w: But even in these C"lses, where the inherited taxonOlnies of
) I\-pt·rtory from an10ng which speakers Il1"lkc deliberate choices ac-
rhetorical theory arc respected in their specificity, the displace-
ment of tradition is nonetheless perceptible. For what such analy-
ses show is that the traditional elassifications of the tropes and fig-
ures arc crudc: terms such ;1S "mct!lnhnr" nr "svnC'cdnche" dl'si ,yn ;"It,,
not at all sin11)le and homogencou~ operatiOl~s, but ;<lther l)u;;(il-~s
of phonologic"ll! syntactical, and semantic processes so C0I11plcx ill
their intertwining that they must be dcen1cd inaccessible to the re
i'm not f1ective manipulation of the speaker. What the rhetorical traditi(Jil
conceived as a set of tactics available to the strategic intentions o!
sure about the speaker has been displaced into that SaIne unconscious kn()\-vl-
this...
1!1l ,,!Oneill it y
edge in which linguistic theory IOGltes our ability to speak <ll1d
write. H.hetorical competence, to adapt NOaIl1 Chomsky's tenni-
l1ology! is ~1 theoretical Hction, the product of a reconstructive pro~
cess that deploys J reticulated rcpertoire of theoretical concepts,
The object of study here, as in a different way in the case of jakob-
son, is no longer rhetoric but rather rhctoricality.
Rhetork and rsychoO!w]ysis. Correlative with the modernist
alteration of the object of study in linguistics from cviuent to un-
conscious patterns, frorn national syntax to universal structure,
;lIld from cOIl1monsensical to counterintuitive evaluation is Freud's
inferential psychology of the unconscious. In psychoanalysis the
mechanisI11S of an otherwise hidden mental world arc revealed in
the figurations of language. Verbal patterns, 11lctaphors, replace~
IllCIllS, and sinlilar tropes that classical rhetoric I11ight have de-
:;cribed in terms of surface ornan1entation and effect upon an audi-
I'nce becolllc out\v,ud, consciously unintended Ill<lnifestations of does pomo
\V ishes and fears, desires and terrors that have been driven inward. necessitat
llnIs, in tandem with his discovery of the revelatory condensa- e a loss of
11l111S and displacements opcf<ltive in drean1s, Freud also probed
'figures" such as jokes! spoonerisms, and puns as syn1ptolllS of
agency,
unconscious operations. Particulm' content may vary with each the way
IIH.lividual, but the structure of the unconscious-its ways of pro- he's
\ l,'l'ding and the strategies of containment whereby it is held in making it
check-arc constant. The manifest contcnt of dreams or slips of seem
t1w tongue nlay be speciHc to the individual's history, but the
IlH'chanislns are inlpersonal and function \vithout reference to sub-
here?
",.( i vo choice. The old figures of speech and thought arc deper-
'flllJlized and transfonncd into general conditions of existence
utileI' than rCInaining, as in classical rhetoric, part of a lexicon or
i llltling to occasion, At least in retrospect, Lacan's famous dictum
!luI the unconscious is structured like a language scems to folhnv
lIwviUlbly frOll1 the juxtaposition of Freud's treatises on dreams
Illd j()kpS with J;lkohson's speciRcation of metaphor and metem-
lily ;IS the basic mechanisrl1s of discourse production, since these
iir,llH'S, as Jakobson notices, arc the rhetorical equivalents of con-
,Iill';;ltion and dispLlcenlent·-the fundamental processes of Freud's
,Il\';llll work." Furthernl0re, the rhetoric cIl1ployed in current psy-
IHI,lll:llytic theory is not limited to expressive phcnonlena, As
HI L:lplanche has suggested, the very processes of ego formation
 JOHN BENDER AND DAVID E. \V[LLBERY
~JrC rhetorical in nature, following paths of contiguity and silni-
larity.:; Indeed, pSydlO~1I1~dysjs itself, as Nicolas Abrah"lIl1 has ,,If-
gue(l is a rhetorical enterprise, its terminology a figurative shell
th~t refers to kernels of psychic meaning without being able to
grasp them directly." The meta theory that endeavors to chart psy-
chic processes is i!nbued, in other v./ords, with the dynamic of rl1e-
toricality that characterizes those processes thelnselves.
Rhetoric {}!1d iVIass ComnHll1ico{jo!1. As the forn1s of comn1Ll~
death of the nication characteristic of Ill.ass society have been extended and
public- i consolidated during the twentieth century, the classical liberal
wonder how model in which individual free subjects contribute disinterestedly
to open, unconstrained political exchange has becOll1e no more
this meshes than heuristic. Images and slogans replace the ideas and expository
with Arendt discourse by which exchange in the public sphere was deHned. Al-
though the basie technology of movable type was devcloped during
the Renaissance, print as a mcdiUll1 [especially newspapers, peri-
odicals, and cheap books! and the growth in literacy that it ulti-
mately fostered were distincti ve to the Engligh tenment and to the
bourgeois culture of nineteenth- and earlier twentieth-century in-
dustrial Europe. But, while the graphic word continues to playa
signiHcant role in cultural life, the structure of literacy has under-
gone decisive alterations. Print has given way to HIm and tele-
vision, to phonographic reproduction, ,md the digital inscription of
language itself in computers. The collation of image and sound in
the mechanical Inedia, even where oral language is concerned, re-
calls but docs not reconstitute the face-to-face speech and physiog-
nOll1ic and gestural performances of classical rhetoric. For in1ages
and sounds may now be synthesized: the voicc, like that of our cur-
rcnt telephone infonnation "operators," I11ay be no 1110re than a
lllcchanical function, the opposite of an ilnpersonation.
Advertising, in particular, v\.'Orks by condensation and Inontagc
to shatter those sequences of cause and effect integral to the con-
struction, representation, and comprehension of personal identity.
Lik~ ather fe::rr113 G£ l';.1<::'SS COi>lliji..ii1icdticAi, <:iJVel Li~illb rehabili-
tates~indced renders virtually universal-a rhetoricality at once
akin to and utterly divorced from classical persuasion. The fixed
traits of celebrity replace the classical orator's varied in1pCrS0I1<l-
tiolls. Nletonyn1ic substitution and juxtaposition supplant that
imitation of the logical connectedness of philosophical discourse
so ccntral to Aristotle's conception of rhetoric Thus, the forn1s of
32
/<het utica lit Y
comn1llI1ication operativc in contCI11pOrary lifc lie closer to the fig-
urative formations described by Freud and Lacan than to the I1lani-
fest processes of a tr;:H.litional fo n.l 111.
The depcrsonal izmg tendencies of modern rhetoricality Hnd il-
lustration in the conjunction, so charc:1cteristic of mass society, of
advertising and bshion. The minlicry endemic to the selection of
clothing is now directed toward person;:llity functions concocted
and circulated by the media. In perhaps the ultimate extension of
this principle, the namc,:; of celebrities known as designers arc- in-
scribed on clothing and other accessories in place of the personal
monograills that once discreetly n1arked attire as individuaL The
designer, in turn, need not be alive, or even a real person! since the
creative personality marked by the famous name is often itself
produced artificially by a corporation-or at least by a corporate
design tea111. The putatively individual name works 111etonylni-
edly to screen collectivIty.
Collective effort on a huge scale is the reality of which individ-
11:lIity has becoll1c the imaginary or fantastic representation_ This
phcnon1enon, in which <ludiences are Inanipulated by the delusion
!It;}t products are the result of individual creative effort, replaces
il,,, old forms of persuasion. And, incidenr,rlly, any real human be-
i".I~S who happen to occupy the position of metonymic celebrity-
I".. they Calvin Klein or Ronald Reagan-become virtually 111ech,r-
Iii/oed ciphers acting out the script of their own renown! thelnselvcs
i', llluch manipulated as the audience they manipulate. The recent
I'''',;ence of a professional HIm actor in the White House mercl y
ilude self-evident the contemporary truth that the pcrfonnative
l\lIU~ of presidential elocution lies not with the sccll1ing individual
\\'110 happens to be in office hut with the impersonal corporate
;[ d (c 0
f.:heloric {]nd ProgllwticS. Not only in the n1ctathcory of 5ci-
!llT, linguistics! m.ass cOInn1unication, and psychoanalysis arc we
ii<, IIIheritors of Nietzsche's legacy, but also in what might be
IIIli'd the sphere of everyday life. The concept of rhetoricality be-
'l,\O;lks the universality of the rhetorical condition! its nonrcstric-
iii'll I n the specialized circumstances of forillal COl11ruunication
-i!·,1 pl'l"suasion. It is J characteristic of n10dernisIl1 that the sphere
'I ,vel yday life-the domain of utterly trivial activities "lI1d inter-
liIIII'.I·S through \"\'hich we daily pass-has increasingly bccon1e an
Hi'! r of scientific inquiry. To cite just two cxanlples haITI philoso-
.13
IOHN BENDER AND DAVID E. WELLBER'r'
phy, both the carly }-Icideggcr \vith his hermeneutics of Dtisein in
its AlIuig}u..:hJ:..eit (everydayness) and the British school of ordinary
languagc philosophy that developed out of the latcr Wittgenstcin's
work are oriented toward this n10st secularized ~1nd elusive of do·
mains, the nexus of our normality. And it is no accident that what
inquiry finds in this domain (vVittgenstein's concept of language
game tells us as much) is a web of rhetorical operations. In other
words, precisely that se.1 of invisible communicative transactions
that the tradition of classical rhetoric did not and could not take
into account hecOInes in the modernist environment a privileged
oblcct of study. lust as the modernist rcturn of rhetoric displaces
the rhetorical operations to an unconscious sphere in such fields as
linguistics and psychoanalysis, so too in the area of what might be
termed "pragmatic" studies 1110dernist rhetoric finds its theI11e in
the impersonal domain of what occurs among us, unnoticed and
without deliberation or grandeur.
The displacement of rhetoric frOIn the classical triViUIl1 to the
dense tangle of our triviality can be illustrated through reference to
a plethora of research programs that have emerged within various
disciplines but nevertheless share a concern for thc pragnw{o of
everydayness. What else, for example, is ethnomethodology (de-
spite its insistence on a phenol11cnological grounding) but a socio-
logical rbctoric of normal doings? Within the disciplinary limits of
sociology', one could also refer to the illustrious example of Erving
Goffmann, whose major works bear titles like Forms of Talk and
The Presentation of Self jn Everyday Lde." Linguistics also has ad-
dressed itself with increasing sophistication to this domain. One
thinks in this connection of the recent bODIn in praglnatic studies,
an example of which is Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson's book Rel-
evance, a study of "comn1unication and cognition" that endeavors
to formalize the rules of conversational exchange and that devel-
ops along its \vay a reconceptualization of such" rhetorical tactics
as metaphor and irony. Indeed l Sperber and Wilson's <.ugulnent in
this p(;rti()~l of their st:.dl' CX8.Gtly cG.rlfir~'l"ls O-:'ll· thcsisrcg;:l;:di~'lg th-.:
shift fron1 rhetoric to rhetoricality insofar as it demonstrates that
n1ctaphor and the other tropes flare sin1ply creative exploitations of
a perfectly general dimension of language use.I'.:'l That is to say, the
figures of language can no longer be treated as a specialized do·
Inain, as a limited set of elocutionary options. Rather, they makl'
up the very fiber of every c0111municative transaction.
34
Rhe/o{ico!ily
One could further dOCUl11cnt the ne\v rhetoric of everyd;IY ljk
through reference to other fields. For instance, cognitive science
;lI1d artificial intelligence stand, in our view, to inherit and radi-
l.:;llly rdonnulate the heuristics of classical rhetoric. Marvin J\ilin-
<;ky's "frames," for example, or Roger Shank's "scripts" arc schc-
Illata of practical knowledge that can be reg8rded as redactions of
Ihe classical theory of topoi.']·' Even asking for ketchup ,,It a harn-
!lllrger joint can prove to be a rhetorical operation of astonishing
lllmplcxity, <lccOlnplished by recalling and modifying a·/lrestaurant
11;1111e" or schema of typical restaurant behavior to \vhich no single
('.Hery confonns in every detail. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's
!ll}(lk i\1etophors Vve Live By dC111011strates even in its title that
11Il!l1 the perspective of cognitive science rhetoricality has bccOlnc
dw condition of Inodern life:: I'
JUwtoric and Literary Criticism. During the period when clas~
.!l';J! rhetoric governed the analysis and production of discourse,
111\' ;lSpccts of the discipline now called literary criticiSI11 not COln-
I'!chl:nded by rhetorical categories were treated under the sub-
ill;lding "poetics." Laterl after the Enlightenment <.1nd ROlnantic
,I< 11101itions of rhetoric criticism of literature could be found in as-
i
>'-!;Ition with the new, often nationalistic disciplines of aesthct- i
philologYI ~md positivistic history. Traditions derived frOI11
,ll<':;c disciplines have enjoyed surprising longevity aInong Western
'iioLI!')' scholars of the twentieth century, as have survivals and
. ·.'IV;t!S of the ancient rhetoric.1! scholia, The Anglo-American
"I'i\'Clllcnt known as new criticisln/' springing initially frorn
'I
.\ ,11,,"n Empson, I. A. Richards, and Allen Tatc, may he consid-
I,ll, luI' cxalnplc, as a nostalgic atten1pt to fuse the organicist prc-
"111111 IllllS of Romantic aesthetics with the formal, figural analysis
I;ILll·tnistic of classical rhetoric. Also nostalgically present in
i" IICW criticism was the presulnption of a shared c0l11munity of
'l,llt' ;111<.1 tasteful gentlen1en VI/ho, though \vriting for pllblica-
'il, ll)()k the forms of conversation .IS their stylistic ideal. Their
> ,.,.,
'>'-",
,.,; 1" ... l-.,., -1=:,.,.",.",.... roC ; ..,.....""
u ~ ...... ~~b .. H .... v v~ U'V«/I
."".·",·1"'...,. " .... /1.,..,.,,1,,;,.,.,,; .... ,·1,·, ....;,,,,,..
l~""~U""'VAI u u ..... «~H"~b ...... ~ .. , .......... ~~ ...... '>
'III( I'Irom the contradictions inherent in their project and from
\, il \'Iltu;dly oratorical ilnpersonation of the detached stance of
.I1,.llllcrested man of letters,
I hi lcvivalist aspect of new criticism~so deeply entrenched
i\, Ill"h ;lnd Alnerican academic departments of litcrature--1l1ay
Ii; ((I ,lCcount for the shock that greeted the arrival of struc-
I~lllr< 1'1 r';I>1 H \1'.'1> 11,\\,11; 1 \\'I-_II.HERY
turalist ~lI1d poststructuralist 111Cthods frOln Europe during the late
1960's and early 1970'S. These methods! based upon ch;:lracteristic
modernist dcvclopInents in linguistics and philosophy, \vorkcd
frOln utterly different principles. Consider for example, the differ-
l
ence between the contained, localized irony of the new critic and
the deep-structural irony of Dcrrida or de Ivlan. In these writers,
irony is no longer il Hgurc of speech or an educated habit of mind; it
is the fundan1ental condition of language production. Since there is
no such thing as a first, originaC or direct state111cnt, they view
every utterance as intrinsically figural, unstable, and haunted by
implications that militate against its overt cL:lin1s. Poetry is no
longer a privileged kind of discourse but a specific case illustrat-
ing the general instance of language itsclf. In the srructuralist-
and now poststructuralist-frar11e of reference, every human en-
deavor, including fundan1ental social and cultural institutions!
n111st be understood as discursively constituted and therefore sub-
ject to the foundational irony disclosed by analyses such ,1S Der-
rida's. As the rhetoricality of twentieth-century culture bccOlnes
ever n10re apparent, both survivals of classical rhetorical analysis
and revivalist lncthods like the new criticisI11 appear terribly rC~
stricted in scope. It is not surprising, therefore, that prestructur-
alist Anglo-Amcrican critics who attempted large typologies of
discourse, such as Kenneth Burke and Northrop Frye, have farcd
better than many others.
Burke's work presents an especially forceful ill ustration of our
argument bearing on rhetoricality. Even where the focus of his
rUI11inations is a specific literary text, ,is for example in his famous
analysis of Keats's "Ode on a Graeci,lll Urn" or his specul.ations on
Goethe's Paust," Burke characteristically directs his inquiry not at
meaning in a henneneutic sense, nor at the cooperation of formal
and thematic components in the 111;:lnne1' of the Ile\v criticisln, but
rather at the text's symbolic labor, its suasive operations. Thus, his
analyses arc rhetorical in their basic orientation; it is indicative
that two of his hf)nkc: (,'.1YYV th0 tpnn l1,..h,,>j·f\,..;,·I' ;,..... 1... ,,;,.. +; .. L~" .;~ 1\ J
though Ilurke himself ~~~;ed-l;i~-,;;~tl;~;I;,-;ir'~l1~~i~~;,',:~.;~;~; th~;
signals his abiding concern for the place of language in human ac-
tion and interaction, the rhetorical thrust of his wide-ranging in-
quiry is evident on every page. Much of Burke's vocabulary can be
t<1k:n as the lexicon for a lllodernist rhetoric: terministic screen,
cntl tlement, representative anecdotc, strategies of Inoti vation, mas~
N.hetorical i ty
ter tropcs, scenc-act ratio! god-tenn, temporizing of essence. More-
over, Burke's \\'o1'k illustrates n1any fe,atures we take to be charac-
teristic of rhetorical inquiry under the conditions of l11odernity. It
is resolutely intenlisciplinarYI drawing on suciology, anthropology,
psychoan"dysis, philosophy, and poetics; it is recursive in struc-
wre, applying its categories to itself as a strategy of argUl11ent
;llld inquiry; its range of objects (one might bettcr S<lY: occasions]
crosses disciplinary boundaries and includcs philosophical schools,
political tracts, evcryJay life, ritual and religion, econolnic and for-
eign policy, literary works, and bodily practices, to n1ention just a
lew. Its final ground is an anthropology t1Ht comes close to the
Nietzschcan definition of 111an as thc imperfect animal, as a being
whose only nature is the unrel11itting l10nnatllralness of his syn1-
hoI ie-rhetorical self-eonsti tu tion."I'1
Rhetoricality pcrvades even methods that, viewed superficial-
ly, might seen1 to continue formalistic traditions. Julia Kristcva/s
(·(JIlcept of flintertextuality," for instancc, could easily be misul1 w
dcrstood as a rcinscription of thc old rhctoric"·" But whereas the
]lew critics considered the forn1al boundaries of the poem, story,
(1/ other verbal construct to delirnit a universe with its own rules
,I lid sclf-refercntiality, Kristeva/s intertextU<llity reveals how every
.ecrningly closed, cvidently personal or otherwise situational utter-
,",ee actually consists of all-but-infinite interlocking networks of
Iclcrcl1cc! quotation, and paraquotation. Every text merges without
IllfulHhry into every other, just as for Bakhtin-Kristeva!s font of
ifl-'ijlimtion during the period when she worked out her ideas about
fill t'ftextuality-cvery word abides in, ~lIld itself cOIltains, countless
Ilttcrsccting ideological contexts. For Bakhtin every utterance is
iiLllly utterances; every speaker is I11<1ny spe~lkcrsi and every seC111-
ill.I')Y rhetorical context encodes many other occasions. Bakhtin's
"," ks, deeply influenced by those of Nietzsche, could be read as
\11(ual treatises on the nature and functioning of rhetoricality.
Why, then, docs contemporary literary research continue to
,1>ll~/ (,lf1 the t!~!!lli~DIDg:y cf the ighcritcd ~hctG~ic;.l--t~;.dition? Is
ilH"It' !lot a fundalnental continuity thM knits past and present to-
y' I hn' Especially in literary studies, " field often decply troubled
Lv I hv rifts of history and by the fear of cultural oblivion, one en-
i ;,llllIers projects that anxiously work to reconstitute for the prcs-
lil ;1 unity of tradition and doctrine th,lt no longer exists. This sug-
('i'd'· [hat in those cases where the rhetorical tradition is invoked,
37
JOHN BENDER AND J)!\V!J) E. '0/lLLBERY I~J)ctor j(;O Jj ty

\vhat is rcally being accomplished is the satisfaction of;l nostalgia tioned at the outSet, (lrigin<lted in disputes reg;lrding property, and
or the lcgiti111ation of one's enterprise of inquiry through ;:l vener- has been concerned throughout its tradition with ensuring the
able genealogy. Of course, overriding constants may be posited in identification of the proper. But rhetoric3lity designates thc thor-
order to construct a history of rhetoric from, say, Aristotle to the oughgoing impropriety of language and <.lction and therefore cannot
present, and thus to attribute contcmpomry value to <"mcient rhe- he captured in the net of a single form of knowledgc. This is not to
torical theory in the 111anncr of the Chicago nco-Aristotelians.': ';Jy that the different liJseiplines that address themselves to ques-
But such continuities will be largely tenninological or so abstract t ions of rhetoric arc entirely insulated from one another. On the
in nature (e.g., rhetoric h;lS ahvays been concerned with bnguagc contrary, interdisciplinary translations are not only possible but
in action) that their cognitive v<due will be minimal. In cit her case, llecessary. Such translations, however, fruitful and provocative as
the categorical displacements that have occurred behind the appar- tlll:y are, em never culrninate in a totalizing theory of rhetoric
cnt stability of signifiers such as "111ctaphor" or "irony" \'\'ill be ~;uch as the classical tradition possessed. l\1odern rhetorical rc-
suppressed. Rhetorical study has been able to vitalizc literary re- d.-arch 111ust be <.111 open-ended series of translations and transfor-
search today precisely because it is no longer what it used to be. To 01:ltio118. It is irrcvoc;lbly dispersed because of the nature of its
get clear on this point, moreover, seen1S to us a prerequisite for the Illundational category. Rhetoricality, then, also designates the par-
continued vitality of that research. Once rhetoricality is under- t l:d and provisional character of evcry attClnpt to know it.
stood as the fundanlental condition under which any contempo-
rary litcrary criticism must proceed, the discipline itself will be
transformed because its boundaries will be redrawn.
In general, then, whm arc we to conclude about the shape of
rhetoric today, following its return' This question elicits a double
ans'i.. ./er, both parts of which point to the decisive transforn1ations
that rhetoric has undergone. First, the very object of rhetorical
anal yses and theories has changed. We arc dealing no longer with a
specialized technique of instrull1cntal comll1unicatiol1, but rather
with a general condition of human experience and action. We have
designated as Jlrhctoricality" this ncw c<1tcgory-the category that
opens the field of modern rhetorical research. Second, there can be
no single contemporary rhetorical theory: rhetoricality cannOt be
the object of a homogeneous discipline. Modcrnist (and postmod-
ernist) rhetorical study is irreducibly multidisciplinary; one cannot
study rhetoric lOut court, but only linguistic, sociological, psycho-
an;dytic, cognitive, comn1unicatiol1al, 111cdial or literary rhetorics.
l

Note that these two aspects of rhetoric in its 1110dernist return

fit togcthcr: for if rhetoricality is our condition and if it names the
irreducible, a priori character of rhetorical p;oeesses, then it also
ill1plies the impossibility of a single governing discourse that could
know that condition. No single thcory can detach itself from the
lin1its set to knowledge and representation by rhetoricality; and
every version of theory bearing on rhetoricality itself partakes of
the rhetorical processes it endeavors to I1lap. Rhetoric, we n1en-

38 39