So the last couple sentences of Anjeli’s
post brought something into sharp relief for me that I have been toying with at
least the last six months: a personal working definition of rhetoric (since
everyone seems to have to add a little somethin’ else to their koolaid). She
says “Perhaps everyone doesn’t need a sense of spirituality to make sense of
the world, but we do need to widen our understandings of rationality and
logic. Otherwise, we will continue to see the world as we always have—and
where’s the adventure in that?”. And this shows me a value set that I have
lying beneath an expansive definition of rhetoric—what I have come to call
simply: “signal intelligence.” I have heard theories from Timbuktu and back
about how rhetoric can be considered verbal, non-verbal, intentional,
unintentional, vended by animate and inmate subjects/objects alike, and these properties flux in and out of history; I think one of the reasons I have come
to taking such a simple definition for myself is that I don’t want to constrain my understanding
to any of those properties, or even levels of artful conduct thereof—signals
just are. I have several fears in
this life: monotony, repetition, stagnation, to name a few, and the way Anjeli
describes the need to expand definitions of logic and rationality so that we
never see the world the same way twice (if I don’t take too much liberty with
that definition), is incredibly insightful to me as to why I am doing the same
thing to rhetoric. I don’t think I ever want to see it the exact same way again…how
depressing that would be.
 |
| A la Chimera |
I need to tie Locke in here, mostly because he made giggle a little with his climax of: rhetoric is shamefully chimeric language-use, when the rest of it is just so crystal clear, right? Methinks the gentleman contradicts himself a bit, and doesn’t consider the expansiveness of rhetorical properties. Locke spends at least ten pages describing the ways that language itself is imperfect…one word represents an incalculable amount of ideas, even if you are “educated” you can misinterpret stuff (haha the irony of Locke’s argument juxtaposed with his values…), and language never fully represents the essence of things. But in his conclusion he explains of rhetoric that “all the artificial and figurative application of words eloquence hath invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment” (710 emphasis added). Wellllllllllp, this is just silly—why don’t you just fully commit and effeminize rhetoric like Plato did the poets?
Either Locke is playing an extremely clever
meta-game where he shows that he just did exactly what he warns against because
of the insinuation of incorrigible truths by merit of communicating with
language, or he just fell for his own trap without the self-awareness and “logic”
to articulate it as just so happening. He JUST explained language is
representing an essence we can’t reach, so how is that not figurative? How is
that not moved by his passions to explain this brilliant heuristic of logic,
which he can’t even follow through with to the end of his argument? There is no judgment that perhaps even his
entire piece is rhetorical, not just the fabrication of limited rhetorical situations
he is condemning at the end (oh, and I thought “fantastical imaginations…will
be very far from advancing thereby one jot in real and true knowledge”
?? p.709). Someone doesn't see that narratives and fiction can fit in a "rational" reality. Locke is doing exactly what the ancient Greeks did by describing the
sun's movement by a tug of a mythical God’s chariot, he is just using tiny
characters rather than beautiful imagery—we’re still not at the essence, honey.
Sorry ‘boutcha.
But this is why Anjeli’s explanation
resonated with me so deeply: it really frustrates me when people try to pin
something down and never leave room open for the expansiveness of properties it
might include. Think about how the universe is said to be constantly expanding,
and that human perception of the universe’s properties has only been around
for a fraction of our universe’s life? We have
to be open-minded enough to see the world differently every single day we are
alive.
No comments:
Post a Comment