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rhetoric and conversation « Previous | |Next »
July 4, 2005

Martin Krygier has an article on the rhetoric of reaction in the Review section of the Australian Financial Review. It really ought to be online. But see here.

Krygier works with the modern, negative conception of rhetoric to explore the way the rhetoric of reaction has function in terms of the history debates about the violent Aboriginal/settler relations in Colonial Australia through the use of the tropes of Holocaust and genocide. He says:

"The rhetoric of reaction is a device intended not to further the flow of conversations among citizens, but to dam it up or redirect it into unthreatening channels. Where it is the characteristic mode of intervention, it should, I believe, be exposed and criticised."

This 'rhetoric of reaction, is born out of a desire to deny, divide and abuse, does considerable damage. This is all very familiar and it expresses the partisan nature of this kind of polemics (not debate) in Australia. The effect it has had is I do not even bother reading the books I see on the shelves of bookshops on the history war of words.

Krygier defends the regulative ideal of conversation as distinct from a war of words, and asks:

"What is needed, then, for real engagement in conversation? One answer can be stated in simple, even, banal terms: a conversation necessarily has more than one party, and it is a pecularity of the particpants' engagement, as distinct from a monologue, a harangue, a tirade, a shouting match, that they treat each other with respect."

He then asks:
"What might that [conversation] involve, particulary when passions are high and moral energies charged?"

Krygier says that he does not have clear answers to this. He does insist that a rhetoric of critique can be similar to a rhetoric of reaction as a mirror does a reflection:
"It relentlessly moralizes about what other with equal determination seeks to sanitize, exaggerates what the other is determined to minimize, demonises what the other sanctifies, closes off exactly the complexities that the other also denies, but for opposite ends."

That describes a lot of left-liberal critique in Australia.

Anyone concerned with the conversation of citizens has a responsibility to avoid both debased forms of rhetoric.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:44 PM | | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (1)
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Comments

So very true.

That still leaves us trying to make sense of a conversation of citizens.

Some call it deliberation.

Might it not also be another kind of rhetoric?

That would question Krygier's modern assumption that rhetoric is bad.

I'm no philosopher, but I'll give it a go.

"That still leaves us trying to make sense of a conversation of citizens."

"Some call it deliberation."

Deliberation, for me, means the thinking on a subject in order to approach an approximation of the truth, or a well-reasoned standpoint. Normally, I think of it as a individual activity, carried out alone, but I can see ways in which two people discussing an issue may work together to approach a mutually acceptable outcome. (whatever mutually acceptable means :) )

But, I'm not sure how well 'deliberation' can be carried out without access to real information and multiple viewpoints. Also, some sort of deliberation process or method would be needed, which could be provided by demonstrations of other people doing it - such as those in academia.

I believe, unless one is prepared to do their own research outside the Herald-Sun, the citizen does not have real information. A lot of rhetoric, but little information. If one were to only watch debate on mainstream TV, like "A current affair", they would only have a point scoring model of discourse on which to base their deliberation.

Without a good source of information or a reliable method for deliberation, I don't think there can be deliberation. Or that it is rare.

----

I guess what I'm trying to say is 'Yes, not all rhetoric is bad. But rhetoric used poorly in the public space, creates bad deliberation in the private domain.'

pax
Some good ideas there in your post.

As you would be aware there is a lot of rhetoric about the brave new world of the internet and the communication highway and free thinking digital warriors.

Some of my comments on rhetoric here and here over at philosopohical conversations.

And here and here at philosophy.com

Hans Georg Gadamer's approach can be found here

A key, and influential, idea about deliberation in a democracy is that it is a form of public reason. My own take on this bouncing off Australian material.

The key ideas are dialogue and interpretation. They are very useful for a digital world and would place a question mark over your conception of deliberation as private. Deliberation in a democracy takes place in a public conversation.