Deuces, Team! :)

Here we come to the last blog post. Where the heck did the time go? How did we get to the very last set? I'm very thrown off by this, but alas it is upon us. I'm just going to try to untangle my thoughts on Perelman, my in class write, and the discussion that followed.

Believability. Man, Doug, I think you really hit a spark with me when you asked about believability again.I'm going to bring us back to my idea of looking at life through a lens (I seem to like those a lot as of late). As you know, I believe that people prefer to view the world through rose-colored glasses--I think that we don't tend to like to look at life through the dirty lens of reality. We, humans, would rather skim over the bad things, or rationalize those things to ourselves in order to better process them than see atrocities for what they truly are--atrocities. I think what is believable is, in part, the things that we can rationalize in our rose-colored perception of reality. We believe the things that "logic" tells us are possible. We believe the things that seem "reasonable" to us. The things that we believe tug on our sense of "logic", "reasonability", and "rationaality" all of which are really only human constructs of value, therefore we are still only believing what society dictates to be believable. We believe the things that seem unreasonable to us, but only under the premise that those things take place in fiction.

(I think fiction is actually quite an intriguing topic, when it comes to beliefs. We know and understand that whatever is happening in the story is not taking place in our world, yet we get sucked into the story as if it is reality. We have no expectation that it should mirror reality, therefore when good things, bad things, wild things, unbelievable things happen in fiction, we believe it to be possible within the fictional realm. For whatever time we are engulfed in the story, we believe that to be reality. We have this deep-set awareness that it is all fictional and potentially impossible in our world, and yet we believe it anyways--even for a short period of time.)

Sorry, total tangent. Anyways, we believe things that society dictates as normal. We find things believable when they are things that we can understand from our own narratives. If certain good or bad things have happened to someone, in their life, then they are more inclined to believe it happened to someone else because they have first-hand experience with that thing being a part of reality. I feel that we believe in narratives that we've experienced ourselves, narratives that we can at least empathize with, or narratives that we feel have the potential to come to fruition.

What's sometimes more interesting is the things that we struggle to believe. I think it is curious that more often than not we have difficulty believing in humanity itself. We don't like to look at the world through a dirty lens, and yet some of the most rose-colored things in life we don't believe. We are confused when someone is kind, compassionate, and thoughtful. We struggle to believe in humane feats such as service and philanthropy. It's as if we know that humans are good creatures and yet we deny the amazingly average things that we do for each other. A lot of these are things that I wholly believe we should be embracing with arms spread wide. Apparently, that rose-colored lens only tints the dark things a nice, pink color--they don't seem to brighten the already good things that we should be believing humans are capable of doing. We also don't believe that horrible things happen, which surprises me much less. It's as if we are aware that terrible things happen to people, yet we have a hard time fathoming that they actually happen. I think this comes back to our personal narratives. We never think its going to happen to us--whatever that horrible it is. We should be able to believe that human kind has the potential to be relentlessly cruel and ardently caring.

Whatever we believe, we believe it for what seems like good reason to us, within our reality and within our personal narrative.

I'd also like to touch on Anjeli's ideas on agreement. I think she hits the nail on the head when she says, "It goes against human intuition to imagine that two objects can occupy the same space at the same time, but that's exactly how we find clarity to complex questions--understanding how both sides can simultaneously exist in the answer slot." I think here, Anjeli says a lot of what I am trying to say about believability. Humans are inherently inclined to agree with each other. The reason we disagree is because we actually want to come to an agreement, we want the other party to understand what we are saying and agree with us, even on some small level. We have opposing opinions, opposing beliefs, and, as humans, we only wish that the other side would see the way we see and believe what we believe. I think we want to believe in the good, the bad, the wild, the unbelievable--yet all logic tells us it cannot be so. Which brings me all the way back to the very early in the semester problem of Logic vs. Rhetoric. I think rhetoric, in this case, is that which reconciles what we believe and what we should believe so that even the things that we don't believe have the capability of obtaining believability.

Boom.

Going Out in Style

Seeing our blog nears its finale, I find myself sentimental.  I must share, posting after Kim is my favorite.  Your questions provoke the writing mind. (-:

Particularly, this stands out: “Does believing or should-be-believing matter at all if we don’t have someone to believe with or to tell our belief to, judge our belief against, etc?”

I had not before devoted much to recognizing how large a role community plays in rhetoric.  After all, if the opinions, consensus, and camaraderie of others were irrelevant, persuasion would go job-searching.  There would be no need to convince others if creating larger networks and taskforces was unneeded.  Rhetoric therefore, is not only evidenced in every interaction and knowledge-making process, but is also the result of intrinsic drives towards shared goals and purposes.  We want to agree with each other—otherwise persuasion would cease to exist.  Argument, generally seen as representing human strife and disparity, actually evidences a desire to see the same together, to concur.  *insert head nod to Jim Corder.* 

Which sounds all good, until Perelman writes, “All intellectual activity which is placed between the necessary and the arbitrary is reasonable only to the degree that it is maintained by arguments and eventually clarified by controversies which normally do not lead to unanimity” (p. 159).  For those having difficulty untangling P’s multi-layered sentences, what he seems to say is, “We measure the reasonableness of thinking (and thus knowledge) to the extent we debate it, usually ending in disagreement anyway.”  Real hopeful guy, this Perelman.  Before unwrapping the quote, I want to call out his spectrum-ends of “necessary” and “arbitrary.”  It’s a curious binary, different from others we have thus encountered.  Rather than proposing two fundamentally opposed ways of thinking (square vs. groovy, rhetoricus vs. seriousus, etc.), Perelman presents the opposing ends of what we think.  At first, this seems viable because we can distinguish between those which are necessary thoughts (to find food, for example) and those which are arbitrary (is the dress white or blue?)  But soon the line blurs—is intellectual activity surrounding the concept of gravity arbitrary or practical?  Yes, gravity is a conception based on human observation and subjective reasoning, but it also plays out practically: “ouch, shouldn’t have tried to fly off my dresser.”  I doubt intellectual activity will ever be definable on a neat, linear, spectrum.  Nice effort though, Perelman. 

What was I going to say before my tangent?  Perelman writes that thoughts and perceptions (intellectual activity) are only as reasonable (I read that as worthy) as we keep discussing them.  Which makes sense, because the age-old conversations, the ones we keep having over and over again (existentialism vs. essentialism, role of logic, acceptable epistemologies, do souls exist, etc.) carry great weights in meaning.  If singular agreement could be easily found, it would have.  So I’m thinking “yeah dude, I hear you” until he writes that those intellectual concepts are eventually clarified through irreconcilable disagreement.

What does the inability to find agreement clarify if not that both sides are correct simultaneously?  Perhaps Perelman meant just that.  For example, that nature and nurture both determine behavior and personality.  These huge questions are clarified not by absolute disagreement, but by recognizing that the two opposing answers are likely not polar opposites, but a simultaneous, multi-dimensional, “stacked” answer.  That rational thinking and romantic thinking are two methods of understanding, both “true” in their own right.  It goes against human intuition to imagine that two objects can occupy the same space at the same time, but that’s exactly how we find clarity to complex questions—understanding how both sides can simultaneously exist in the answer slot.  If humankind, inherently desiring agreement, can stand adamantly opposed, how can it not mean that both sides contain truth? 

It's easy to throw punches at Perelman for his sentence-layering, which requires intense front-loading of information before delivering the punch line which then subsequently changes all the previous clauses.  Yet he communicates through a retrospective, reframing, method.  Call it dense, but isn’t that how knowledge works?  As we accrue understanding, it causes what came before and seemed confusing to now enter the light.  And then we know. 

Dr. Doug, you made me a gear-head. Success.

Well, well, well. Since our prompt was quite unassertive, and since Kaylee covered the bruising of Perelman’s text, I might just bud off my in-class write today as it links to believability, persuasion, etc. I need to start here because I have to admit the Perelman reading itself didn’t really shift the way I perceive the role of persuasion in rhetoric…it’s still there, it’s still tangential, it’s still not the most interesting part of rhetoric to me. My synthesis paper actually helped me figure out what I am most deeply intrigued by now within this study, which are the mechanisms behind how rhetoric “travels” or “situates” and where it is “located” or “locates” in the first place—is it embodied, is it felt, is it precognitive, is it only in our consciousness and is that an abstract or a material phenomenon, or both, neither?

So…Doug’s question today: “Is there a difference between what is believable and what should be believable?”

But what do you have to know before you can even decide do I or should I believe in something? Does believing or should-be-believing matter at all if we don’t have someone to believe with or to tell our belief to, judge our belief against, etc? In fact, these questions seem to be at the base of all my observations these days: “but how do others perceive what I am perceiving—I feel like my perception is so irrelevant.” That seems to be the more frustrating part for me…the part where I am constantly considering relational perspectives to mine. It seems simple to distinguish something should be believable to us individually, but what we really want is to have our beliefs believed by others, to find relation, to find a network of belief. But where does the rhetoric come from, where does it go, when does it linger long enough to become a belief, a network of belief, or not long enough to create a new critique of something, a new-non-belief, belief?

 I am currently experiencing this tug of war in my project for this class on Neurorhetorics—there is this push in the field of Rhet/Comp to hook up with cognitive neuroscience to make the field look more reputable and self-evident in its intellectual prowess. But some Compies really begrudge this move because it is giving in to a “making something believable according to society” when it should already be legitimate in its own right. But what is that own right? And what are the heuristic systems or mechanisms exclusive to sciences that’s simply cannot inform studies of Rhet and Comp…that is where I currently remain skeptical. I have heard the argument that Humanities already have sufficient heuristic systems to find and make meaning, but I think to say those systems are wholly separate from “scientific” heuristics is short-sighted…we use the scientific method every day in rhetoric: hypotheses based on precedent and observation, the experiment (e.g. social exchange), and a reflection data analysis and conclusion of the social exchange. And by definition, the scientific process has to be rhetorical because we made it, so why would we be so quick to cast aside help from the sciences? Why can’t rhetoric come from a scientific mechanism? Is there scientific mechanism that isn’t rhetorical?

Okay. I’m gonna stop now. Gotta leave something for the course project. J

"The once and future queen"

Whew. This one was a bit of a struggle. Maybe it's the fact that I've had a long, long day; maybe it's the fact that I'm very much over undergrad entirely and have come down with a severe case of senioritis. I'm not quite sure.

Maybe I just haven’t had enough coffee today, or maybe I’ve been out of the blog game too long... but Perelmen, for the majority of “The Realm of Rhetoric” seems to be overcomplicating an already overcomplicated idea and writing himself into circles. His writing style just seems a little excessive, overly ornate, with several sentences that run over six lines long.

But enough on style; Perlemen’s distillations of the most prominent philosophers actually seem quite accurate, besides being overgeneralized. These are all familiar names that we, as university writing majors, have come to know very well. As Perelmen says, Socrates seems to also suggest, at certain points, that the realm of rhetoric is exclusive to philosophers, to those in the “high ground” of thought and not the average person. Perelmen ponders Socrates rhetoric, wherein the rhetor must always strive towards some sort of truth to make his argument legitimate and something more than simply “the effects of language, the charm of the word, and a resort to flattery” (154). Both Socrates and Plato seem somewhat idealistic in their definitions of rhetoric.

Then, in comes Descartes with his response: “The attempt to elaborate a philosophy wherein all these would be either self-evident or compellingly demonstrated leads to the elimination of all forms of argumentation and to the rejection of rhetoric as an instrument of philosophy.” Mic drop.

I’m not entirely sure when Perelmen’s own opinion of rhetoric begins and the famous philosophers’ ends. But, honestly, I am so tired that most of this sounds like gibberish to me…

For example, this is one sentence: “Having noted the theological background of the conception of science, both with Bacon and wish Descartes, and having underscored the paradoxical and hardly admissible aspect of the Cartesian imagination, which would subject all opinions to the same criterion of self-evidence as mathematical theses, we should point out that even Descartes had to trust opinions for his provisional morality.” Sixty words in one sentence.

The same idea could have been expressed in much simpler terms: “Considering science’s roots in theology and the perspectives of Bacon and Descartes, all opinions must be subjected to the scientific theory.” Done, in a third of the words, without much significance lost. The last clause is somewhat arbitrary, since provisional morality is always based upon speculation; Descartes makes it clear throughout his Meditations that he cannot truly be sure about his opinions on morality, which lies outside of the realm he determined to be his absolute truths.

I do, despite his wordiness, appreciate the author’s distinction between mathematical “truth” and self-evident “truth,” although we have encountered the same opinion numerous times in this class, written much more eloquently.

But then, he quickly loses me again in a tangle of musings about the reconciliation of different, seemingly opposing paradigms. As a grand finale, Perlemen provides us with perhaps the worst definition of rhetoric that has ever been written: "the once and future queen of the human sciences."

Let's just say this one wasn't as moving as some of the other readings for me.

Identity pt. II...Taken and Compromised?

After confronting the truth (although itself reframed throughout this course) that "rhetoric basically equals everything," it was comforting to return to familiar ideas of rhetoric as argument and persuasion, even amid Ramage’s lecture-style prose.

Like Megan, I agree that rhetoric functioning to persuade and argue is not inherently wrong. Ramage writes to the struggle of controlling our meaning:

"We are assaulted on a daily basis by various pitches for readymade identities, proffered by advertisers, employers, writers, and propagandists…And my capacity to resist, oppose, and entertain divergent beliefs—to understand my ways of talking about the world “in terms of” alternative ways of talking about the world—is a fundamental expression of my humanity" (p. 69-70).

At the same time Ramage converges rhetoric on persuasion and argument, he cannot avoid discussing its broader implications to humanity and ways of being. This unavoidable expansion of application reminds me of the three diagrams sketched on the class white-board. We often attempt to isolate or condense an idea, reducing it to digestible form. Which is great, because bite-sizes let us more easily comprehend. However, upon analyzing the neatly condensed idea we see that infinite connections and extrapolations are possible. Rhetoric will never be containable. Focusing on argument and persuasion is another lens, like square/groovy, and one likely to yield insight.

What matters most here? This stands out: “The act of writing can eventually render the agent a servant of her own act” (p. 77). Argument and persuasion have the potential to take great strides towards equality, freedom, peace, and all those good things. However, the force can corrupt; too easily we find ourselves in pointless arguments, enhancing our personal power rather than actually defending the point. As mentioned in class, values inherently underlie every argument. Although some would claim “objective” argumentation is best, losing sight of the values and reasons we defend makes us agents of argument, slaves to persuasion. Then again, excessive emotion in argumentation pushes away from seeing the reasons clearly. To argue effectively, we walk a line.

What seems different here? This: “In some cases, we may achieve (persuasion in argument) by weakening (another’s) identification with or adherence to an alternative set of attitudes and beliefs” (p. 102). I had not considered the fact that with every won argument (gain), there is inevitable loss of another line of reasoning, belief, value, etc. Like children in the backseat, buckling in a new one means a previously-sat child must move. I never considered what we compromise in argument. What we unknowingly surrender or abandon. It causes me to consider arguments I enter, especially with certain individuals whose intentions are generally…less than stellar. George Bernard Shaw wrote, "I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it."

Becoming mindful of what we compromise or surrender simply by entering or engaging an argument, whether or not consensus is reached, is another perspective through which to understand rhetoric.  Ah, all these lenses through which we look…

Identity

I just spent much of my synthesis paper talking about how identity helps us create the rhetorical filter through which we view the world. Ramage brings up this idea for me, again, in chapter 3. I spoke heavily about how the decisions that we make have the capacity to change everything about our identity, and Ramage speaks to this as well. I feel that it is beyond true that our decisions shape us every bit as much as our appearance, upbringing, hometown, schooling, and everything that we are born into, "Absent a fixed order that assigns everything a value, meanwhile, we are free to construct and choose our identities; but with that freedom comes the necessity of evaluating and negotiating our options. Which means in turn that our beliefs, values, relationships, status, and all the things that matter most deeply to us are also subject to negotiation and evaluation" (70). I feel that because these sorts of things matter most to us, we are inherently shaped by them.

While we are shaped by these facets of our identities, more often than not we are inclined to identify with the majority. We often identify with the majority, even when it goes against our actual beliefs for fear of rejection. Here Ramage brings in rhetoric and its persuasive power. Society holds the belief that everyone should conform to the majority, and when people do not they are shunned for it. Ramage points out "when the dominant belief systems attempt either to ignore alternative belief systems or to coerce them into compliance with their own, they pay a very high price" (70). A divide gets created between the two opposing viewpoints and we need rhetoric to reconcile that divide. Rhetoric gives us a means of finding some middle ground between the two sides. Rhetoric allows people that stand on opposite shores of an issue some sort of way for agreement, "Truth for rhetoric is a public matter requiring agreement among people" (71). This makes me think of politics and how difficult it is for our House and Senate to agree on anything because the two different parties struggle to find some sort of agreement. If rhetoric were properly employed in politics, and both parties recognized that there are rights and wrongs on both sides and came to a compromise for the betterment of the whole country and not their singular party, then the divide between the two could be lessened. In the same way, this could help people reconcile differences between the things that people value and understanding each other. If rhetoric was properly employed in personal situations, we could more easily compromise and understand where other people are coming from. This would also reconcile the differences between the majority and minority beliefs and identities.

I know I focused mostly on the early part of Chapter 3 and sort of neglected the rest, but given that my mind has been captivated by identity for the majority of the last few weeks, it only seemed fitting to keep talking about it.

Also, I just remembered that I forgot to take a look at the prompt for the first post of the week, so I'm going to touch on that stuff right now! Sorry team! Okay, so rhetoric as a way of persuasion and argumentation. Well, in my mind, when I think of rhetoric as a way of arguing or persuading another party, my mind always goes back to politics and personal altercations. Often politics and personal altercations are driven by the fact that two people or parties see things in two opposite ways, and they can't make the other party understand where they are coming from. Both parties are set in their beliefs and intend to make the other party see things their way. When thinking about rhetoric as a way of persuasion rather than a way of looking at the world, seems to me as if we are saying the act of using rhetoric is persuading someone to see a point. I think I realized, in reading this that rhetoric is not just a way of looking at the world, but also a way of persuading and arguing. I feel like all semester I have spent my time ignoring the idea that rhetoric is persuasion because that sounds so simple and manipulative. Yet in ignoring that, I had to come to the realization (doing this reading) that I can't ignore that fact about rhetoric. Rhetoric isn't only a way of looking at the world, it is also a way of arguing and persuading--and that's not a bad thing!

We cannot do anything BUT believe.

• Kim wrote, “I don't believe when I have something "right"… because I know that it is never fully complete knowledge.”

• Allison said, “All the things I can say about sexual abuse – about rape—none of them are reasons. The words do not explain. Explanation almost drove me crazy, other people’s explanations and my own. Explanations, justifications, and theories.”

• Doug asked, “What shapes our identification with a given narrative, and how does believability emerge from such identification?”

I have to admit, I struggle writing on Allison’s piece. How can I do her story justice? My rhetorical analysis seems pointless in the face of ongoing sexual violence; my passionate advocacy side is ramped up. It’s hard to deconstruct a piece of text that, while I am analyzing it, continues to provoke empathy, outrage, and reveal a meaning greater than words.  Although I doubt any amount of analyzation could hinder her voice.

Allison’s identity emerges as she avoids concrete explanations and theoretical reasoning. She shrugs off the “fidelity comes from rational thinking” line of thought, and establishes her narrative with an alternative reasoning that would drive Aristotle mad. There are no facts and figures, not even a strict line of argument. Her narrative fidelity is established as she reveals experiences and emotions so raw, so awful, so poignant, that the reader is brought to their knees and cut to the heart. The reader cannot do anything but hang on her every word; truth like this is hard to make up.

Her knowledge does not need to be “complete” for it to be true. In fact, the believability of the piece comes from its fragmented perspective, not its facts. It offers no objective recount, no historical timeline of her childhood. It is a collection of dark sweaty nights, moments full of fear and ecstasy, interspersed with an exigency that can only be understood as the need to live. Moving through trauma, she recognizes that the “truth” is not one objectified story. Truth is not a psychological explanation for an act. Truth is not whether or not the legal system found him guilty. Truth is not every minute she remembers being shoved or hiding. Truth is the story she tells herself, the personal knowledge of who she will be. The narrative is believable, because her life is at stake.

There is little separation between audience and text, and the relatability is another driver of believability. Rarely does the narrative leave ground into the non-physical realm. Hedging every statement of reflection or revelation or epiphany is a concrete story or scene. We are constantly placed back into her scenes, living her reality, and the experience is hard to discount as non-believable. She’s telling herself the story as she tells it to us, and we desperately want her to believe herself, as she writes, “I will not wear that coat.”

The fidelity of the piece to “truth” also comes from its highly specialized nature. As the reader, we are alright with vagueness or unanswered questions, because Allison is not appealing to some higher understanding fueled by logic or reasoning. She is making her own truth—personal knowledge. The narrative is most true and relevant to her own self and life. We listen almost as bystanders, and the relative truth of the piece is based on how much its contents free her soul.

For a narrative to be powerful, see above. For a narrative to be speakable, we must tell ourselves the story enough that we believe it, breathe it, and live it, so that telling others is not a risk to its existence. We must have the ability to transfer a multi-dimensional story into language, and somehow preserve its depth and character.  For a narrative to be spoken: courage.