Rhetorical Power

## Citation

Mailloux, Steven. *Rhetorical Power*. Cornell University Press, 1989.

## Chapter 1: Rhetorical Hermeneutics

Beginning with an anecdote - disagreement in class over the Reagan administration's (re)interpretation of the Space Act of 1958, and how this led to a desire for access to a hermeneutic method that would yield a "correct" interpretation. Yet neither textual realism (the idea that the text speaks for itself and the critic merely "discovers" this meaning) nor readerly idealism (the idea that all meaning is constructed and projected onto the text by the reader) can sufficiently or satisfactorily resolve this debate over interpretation.

Textual realism fails because it cannot account for the specificity of a text in relation to other conventions.

Readerly idealism fails because its conventions rest on context - which is either something to be acknowledged but not approached, or else boundless and inexhaustible in the context that can be pointed to as relevant to interpretation.

"Nor do theories combining realism and idealism avoid the hermeneutic problems. [...] Such theories, by moving toward idealism, avoid the realist problem of explaining textual causation. But when those same theories run up against the idealist problem of determining appropriate interpretive conventions in a given situation, they turn back to the text for a solution." (13)

"The solution to the realist/idealist debate in hermeneutics is not, then, the proposal of still another Theory. The way to answer the realist/idealist question "Is meaning created by the text or by the reader or by both?" is simply not to ask it, to stop doing Theory." (14)

"One route to follow takes a turn toward rhetoric. I take this path by proposing a *rhetorical hermeneutics*, an anti-Theory theory. Such a hermeneutics views shared interpretive strategies not as the creative origin of texts but rather as historical sets of topics, arguments, tropes, ideologies, and so forth which determine how texts are established as meaningful through rhetorical exchanges. In this view, communities of interpreters neither discover nor create meaningful texts. Such communities are actually synonymous with the conditions in which acts of persuasion about texts take place." (15)

## Chapter Two: The Institutional Rhetoric of Literary Criticism

The institutional and rhetorical history of the rise of New Criticism, Reader Response's reaction to New Criticism, and the methodological legacy of this debate. (Reader Response theory proposes that texts teach us how to read - see Mailloux's sample reading of *Moby Dick* and the disappearance of Ishmael, for example)

## Chapter Three: Rhetorical Production and Ideological Performance

"The thesis of a rhetorical hermeneutics: any specific interpretation is best understood in relation to particular historical contexts of institutional and cultural debates." (57)

Attention to the ways in which texts (and their understood meaning) are products of cultural and hermeneutic histories. Culture is not a current or a flow or a confluence - it is a struggle, an agon (see Hannah Arendt). Citing Kenneth Burke's conversation parlor, Mailloux positions "meaning" as a cite of cultural opposition and struggle.

**"Rhetoric [...] the political effect of trope and argument"** (59) - DEFINING RHETORIC

"Ideologies as defining positions [...] sets of beliefs and practices serving particular sociopolitical interests in a specific historical context, and these sets appear in the cultural conversation as strategic arguments and rhetorical figures." (60)

## Chapter 4: Cultural Reception and Social Practices

After surveying the ideological battlegrounds of the 1880s and the 1980s around *Huckleberry Finn*'s interpretations, Mailloux notes "To read such cultural practices, one must, as a first step, interpret the rhetoric of a text as participating in the cultural debates of a specific historical period and place [...] In this view, the rhetoric of a text, does not simply 'reflect' these social practices and circumstances; rather, discursive rhetorical practices are modified extensions and varied repetitions of non-discursive practices." (104)

## Chapter 5: Rhetoric, Theory, and Politics

"From this rhetorical perspective, doing histories of interpretive acts is the only kind of positive theorizing about interpretation that counts." (135)

Mailloux presents readings of power in *One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest* (Ken Kesey), *Orientalism* (Edward Said), and *Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature* (Richard Rorty), to argue for a Foucauldian theory of reading that rests on representation, not ontological truth - the relation between knowing subject and subject known as situated within historical contexts of power-knowledge, rather than in a vacuum. In other words, placing readers and texts in cultural context.

"Rhetorical power describes the argumentative forces at work within the particular historical contexts in which interpretive knowledge emerges." (147)

So can interpretations be validated? No, if we are looking for trans-historical and trans-cultural essential understandings; yes, "if such justification means appealing to a specific 'theory' or reading of texts which itself must be developed and defended within a particular rhetorical context and tradition of arguments" (149)

"The point here is not that interpretations cannot be accepted or rejected; rather, it is that any literary explication participates in the rhetorical politics of interpretation, a politics embedded in institutional structures and specific cultural practices." (149)

## Chapter 6: Truth or Consequences

Mailloux presents the rhetorical history of his own theory of rhetorical history and rhetoricity - readings of Stanley Fish's *Is There a Text in This Class?* and Knapp and Michaels' "Against Theory."

Against Knapp and Michael, Mailloux insists that theory can still have consequential effects, even if they are not the purported ones. "Theory does change practice." (157)

Similarly, Mailloux rejects Fish's conclusions that antiprofessionalism (like antifoundationalism) are doomed because they cannot actually get outside of what they critique - antiprofessionalism needs professionalism, and antifoundationalism needs antifoundationalism. Mailloux disagrees, because again theory can change practice and Leftist antiprofessionalism seeks a transformation of the profession, not an abolition of it.

Some caveats: "A rhetorical hermeneutics can be truly rhetorical only if it locates itself within, not above, its own history." (167)

A still greater danger for a rhetorical hermeenutics is that a demonstration of its rhetoricity will undermine its persuasiveness as theory. [...] Does rhetorical candor detract from rhetorical effectiveness? The answer is yes only if the arguments of this rhetorical theory have not been entirely persuasive. [...] However, if you are convinced by my rhetorical claims, then an admission of their rhetorical grounds is not only unsurprising but absolutely necessary. For rhetorical candor is the rhetorical theorist's obligation, not his embarrassment." (167)

**Come back to this section, see especially footnote at the end of the chapter, on the critic's response to misappropriation of ideas and the duty to guard against co-opting of ideas for other ends**.

## Conclusion

Returns to the Space Act treaty interpretation debate. We can't recourse to identifying the Reagan administration's reading as ideological (and thus untrustworthy) because that presumes a non-ideological way of reading that is "correct" - again, placing us within the essentialism of the text's meaning. A further definition of ideology: "A rhetorical activity constituting interpretation as a politically interested act of persuasion." (171)

What rhetorical hermeneutics allows is to see "theories of interpretation function less as constraints on reading than as resources for arguing. That is, formalist, intentionalist, and other theories do not provide guarantees of correct interpretation or algorithms for resolving interpretive disputes, but in particular historical contexts they do make available to disputants additional rhetorical tactics for continuing specific arguments over meaning." (171)

Mailloux performs the rhetorical history of interpretation that advanced particular understandings of the treaty and justifications for the Reagan administration's policies. A Congressional hearing moved between recourses to the text itself, the intention of the original authors, and conventional practice and application to argue both for and against: "Both the administration and its critics accused the other side of illegitimately mixing politics with interpretation." (180)

"In contrast, it has been the argument of this chapter and of the entire book that textual interpretation and rhetorical politics can *never* be separated. [...] I am certainly *not* saying that it is impossible to disagree effectively with the Reagan administration's absurd reinterpretation of teh ABM Treaty. One does not, however, have to become a foundationalist theorist in order to do so. Instead, as I noted earlier, one simply and rigorously argues for a counterinterpretation, making such rhetorical moves as pointing to the text, citing the author's intentions, noting the traditional reading, and invoking the consensus [...]. The resulting interpretation is, of course, just as contingent [...] and could be just as open to further debate. To admit this contingency, to recognize the rhetorical politics of ever interpretation, is not to avoid taking a position. Taking a position, making an interpretation, cannot be avoided. [...] Our beliefs and commitments are no less real because they are historical, and the same holds for our interpretations. If not foundationalist theory will resolve disagreements over poems or treaties, we must always argue our cases. In fact, that is all we can ever do." (180-181)

YES - there's probably an article or so in here that could apply Mailloux's rhetorical hermeneutics to the current age of post-truth and alternative fact? Thinking especially of the James Comey hearing, in which Republican senators grilled Comey on whether "I hope" should have been understood as a direction.