C512 Rhetorical Theories of Cultural Production
(Joint Listed with C701 in
Cultural Studies & G620 in American Studies)
Fall 2007
Meeting Time & Place:
Monday, 3:00-5:30;
Office Hours: Wednesday 3:00 – 5:00 and by appointment.
Office:
Webpage: http://www.indiana.edu/~ivieweb
This course examines rhetoric as it is implicated in cultural production, with reference to Giambattista Vico on poetic wisdom and constitutive myth, Friedrich Nietzsche on the will to power, Kenneth Burke on the drama of human relations, and Chaim Perelman on the articulation of justice. Our emphasis is on reading, interpreting, and interconnecting the theoretical texts of these four key figures to address the general question of how myth operates rhetorically through metaphor, analogy, and other modalities of association and dissociation to negotiate agonistic relations.
Giambattista Vico,
New Science, trans. David March (1744;
Joseph Mali, The
Rehabilitation of Myth: Vico’s New Science (1992;
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1968).
Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose, 3rd ed. (1935;
Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric
of Motives (1950;
Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, trans. John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969).
Note: Please complete all assigned readings prior to the designated class meeting.
Vico on Rhetoric and Poetic Wisdom
“In order to know the human world we must know its constitutive myths.” Joseph Mali, regarding Vico’s contribution, p. 13.
August 27
Vico on rhetoric:
(1) “The Institutiones
Oratoriae,” in Michael Mooney, Vico in the Tradition of Rhetoric (1985;
(2) John D. Schaeffer, “Orality and Sensus Communis in Vico’s Early Writings on Rhetoric,” in Sensus Communis: Vico, Rhetoric, and the Limits of Relativism (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1990), pp. 55-79.
Vico on myth:
(1) Joseph Mali, “Introduction,” The Rehabilitation of Myth, pp. 1-15;
(2) Stephen H. Daniel, “Narrative and Mythic Figuration in Vico,” Myth and Modern Philosophy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), pp. 129-57.
Vico, Idea of the Work, Elements, Principles, and Method, New Science, pp, 1-131.
September 3
John D. Schaeffer, “Sensus Communis in the New Science,” in Sensus Communis: Vico, Rhetoric, and the Limits of Relativism, pp. 80-99.
Vico, Poetic Wisdom, Part I, New Science, pp. 135-251.
September 10
Catherine Hobbs, “Vico on the
Threshold: Modern Language and
Rhetoric,” in Catherine L. Hobbs, Rhetoric
on the Margins of Modernity: Vico, Condillac, Monboddo (
Ernesto Grassi, “Introduction: The Roots of the Italian Humanistic Tradition,” and “Rhetoric and Philosophy,” in Ernesto Grassi, Rhetoric as Philosophy: The Humanist Tradition (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980), pp. 1-34.
Vico, Poetic Wisdom, Part 2, New Science, pp. 252-351
September 17
Sandra Rudnick Luft, Vico’s Uncanny Humanism: Reading the New
Science between Modern and Postmodern (
Vico, Discovering the True Homer, the Course of Nations, Conclusions, New Science, 355-491
Nietzsche on Rhetoric and the Will to
Power
“. . . Nietzsche engages the full power and force of rhetoric, exploring the risks and benefits of living in a world of language . . . .” Douglas Thomas, p. 12.
September 24
Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg,
Rhetoric in the Enlightenment, in The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from
Classical Times to the Present (
Douglas Thomas, Reading Nietzsche Rhetorically (New York: The Guilford Press, 1999), “Introduction,” pp. 1-13.
Friedrich Nietzsche, “On the Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense,” in Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the
Early 1870’s, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale
(1979;
Alan D. Schrift, “Language, Metaphor, Rhetoric,” and “Perspectivism, Philology, Truth,” in Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation (New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 123-168.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, “Editor’s Introduction,” pp. xiii-xxiii, Book One, Nihilism, pp. 3-82.
October 1
Eric Steinhart, “The Will to Power,” in On Nietzsche
(
Francis Mootz, Nietzsche and
Radical Rhetorical Critique, in Rhetorical
Knowledge in Legal Practice and Critical Legal Theory (
Paul de Man, “Rhetoric of Tropes (Nietzsche),” and “Rhetoric of Persuasion (Nietzsche),” in Allegories of Reading (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1979), pp. 103-131.
Steve Whitson and John Poulakos, “Nietzsche and the Aesthetics of Rhetoric,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 79 (1993): 131-45.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, Book Two, Critique of Religion, Morality, and Philosophy, pp. 85-257.
October 8
Alan D. Schrift, “Nietzsche’s
Contest: Nietzsche and the Culture
Wars,” in Why Nietzsche Still? Ed. Alan D. Schrift
(
Dana R. Villa, “Democratizing the Agon: Nietzsche, Arendt, and the Agonistic Tendency in Recent Political Theory,” in Why Nietzsche Still?, pp. 224-46.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, Books Three and Four, Evaluation and Discipline, pp. 261-550.
Burke on Rhetoric and Human Relations
Kenneth
Burke, as literary critic and rhetorical theorist, according to Laurence Coupe,
defines myth as “a narrative that effects identification within the community
that takes it seriously . . . .” Laurence Coupe, Kenneth Burke on Myth, p. 6.
October 15
Laurence Coupe, Kenneth Burke on Myth: An Introduction (NY: Routledge, 2005), pp. 1-55.
Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose, Hugh Dalziel
Kenneth Burke, “Four Master Tropes,” in A Grammar of
Motives (1945;
October 22
Laurence Coupe, Burke on Myth and Ritual Drama, Kenneth Burke on Myth, pp. 57-93.
Ross Wolin, “Permanence and
Change: Ideals of Cooperation,” in The Rhetorical Imagination of Kenneth Burke (
Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose, “The Basis of Simplification” and “On Human Behavior Considered ‘Dramatistically,’” pp. 167-294.
Note:
Paper Proposal Due in Class on October 22.
October 29
Laurence Coupe, Burke on Myth and Victimage, Kenneth Burke on Myth, pp. 95-138.
Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, Introduction, The Range of Rhetoric, and Traditional Principles of Rhetoric, pp. xiii-180.
November 5
Ross Wolin, “A Rhetoric of Motives: Communication, Hierarchy, and Formal Appeal,” in The Rhetorical Imagination of Kenneth Burke, pp. 171-204.
Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, “Order,” pp. 183-333.
Kenneth Burke, “Definition of Man,” in Language as Symbolic Action (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), pp. 2-24.
Kenneth Burke, “Terministic Screens,” in Language as Symbolic Action, pp. 44-62.
Perelman on Rhetoric and Justice
“ . . . Chaim Perelman was motivated from the beginning of his
philosophical career to elucidate the principles of justice,
and the ancient conception of rhetoric plays an explicit and central role in
his philosophy.” Francis Mootz, p. 18.
November 12
Alan Gross and Ray Dearin, Perelman’s life, influence, and philosophical foundations, in Alan G. Gross and Ray D. Dearin, Chaim Perelman (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), pp. 1-30.
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, Introduction and Framework of Argumentation pp. 1-62.
Chaim Perelman, Justice (New York: Random House, 1967), 3-87.
Perelman, “Philosophy, Rhetoric, Commonplaces,” in Chaim Perelman, The New Rhetoric and the Humanities (Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1979), pp. 52-61.
November 19
Francis Mootz, Justice as a
Product of Rhetorical Knowledge, in Francis J. Mootz,
Rhetorical Knowledge in Legal Practice
and Critical Legal Theory (
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, Starting Points of Argument, pp. 63-183.
Perelman, “The Rule of Justice,” in Chaim Perelman, The Idea of Justice and the Problem of Argument, pp. 79-87.
November 26
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, Techniques of Argumentation—Quasi-logical and Causal, pp. 185-349.
Perelman, “Opinions and Truth,” in Chaim Perelman, The Idea of Justice and the Problem of Argument, pp. 125-133.
December 3
Alan Gross and Ray Dearin, “The Figures as Argument,” Chaim Perelman, pp. 115-134.
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, Techniques of Argumentation—Analogy, Dissociation, and the Interaction of Arguments, pp. 350-514.
Perelman, “Analogy and Metaphor in Science, Poetry, and Philosophy,” in Chaim Perelman, The New Rhetoric and the Humanities, pp. 91-100.
Note:
Course paper is due on or before Monday, December 10.
Class Discussion (25%)
Students are expected to participate regularly and thoughtfully in class discussions, reflecting a careful reading of the texts assigned for each week. As you read and discuss each theorist, you should identify key insights and contributions as well as issues and unresolved problems in his discussion of rhetoric as a mode of cultural production.
As part of the class discussion assignment, two students each class meeting (each student will do this two or three times during the semester) will be asked to assume the leadership role of initiating discussion (one student initiating discussion for the first half of the class period and the other for the second half). This involves making a three-minute presentation that identifies and develops a rationale for a key discussion question.
Paper Proposal (25%)
Students will turn in a five-page proposal for an article-length study in political culture that identifies a particular problem of agonistic relations and conceptualizes it as the rhetorical operation of myth. The proposal should identify the cultural problem to be explored, the specific case or cultural texts in which this problematic is manifest, the paper’s potential significance as a contribution to relevant scholarship, and how the paper will draw substantially on the four theorists covered in the course (and assigned readings) to address this issue of cultural production. This paper is due in class on October 22.
Paper (50%)
Students will turn in a 25-30 page paper (plus endnotes or a list of sources cited) which draws substantially and systematically on the four theorists covered in the course to advance an original thesis about agonistic relations and the operation of myth in the rhetorical production of political culture, with reference to specific cultural texts. For example, I am currently working on a study of political myth in presidential rhetoric with an interest in how the myth of redemptive violence and the projection of war demonology can be finessed and transformed by peace-building dissent. Your paper should be written in the style of a scholarly journal article which advances an original insight that contributes significantly to an existing body of scholarship. You should draw on the assigned readings of the course as your primary conceptual material, emphasizing the conceptualization of rhetoric and myth in cultural production as it relates to the case at hand, rather than an extended analysis of the case, per se. You may wish to go beyond the assigned readings, but this paper is meant to provide you with a vehicle for drawing together your reading in the course in an insightful and original way that is applicable to your research interests in a specific domain of cultural production and critique. With this assignment, I aim to encourage you to read closely, consider carefully, integrate systematically, and apply ingeniously the assigned readings for the course. Follow the Chicago Manual of Style (or MLA style manual), using endnotes or parenthetical documentation, consistent with the scholarly journal or journals to which the paper would be most likely submitted. The paper is due at the end of the term on or before Monday, December 10.