Page 75 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

Rhetoric 59

was primarily understood as a discipline tied to the teaching of public
speaking, and its focus tended to be on the analysis of speeches removed
from their cultural and historical contexts. This changed in the 1970s and
1980s, due in large part to the emergence of television as a primary medium
of public discourse, the rise of grassroots political movements that repre-

sented the marginalized and the oppressed, and the influence of European
philosophers such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida,
and Paul de Man. This led a new generation of American rhetorical theo-
rists such as Lloyd Bitzer, Edwin Black, Wayne Booth, Michael McGee, and
Raymond McKerrow to start rethinking, among other things, the possibil-
ity or desirability of objective knowledge, the monolithic concept of the
“ the audience, ” and the relation between language use and political power.

These scholars were among the first to work at the intersection of rhetorical
theory and cultural criticism, and to conceive of rhetoric theory as a valu-
able resource in the struggle for progressive social change.
Kenneth Burke was massively influential to the new rhetorical theorists.

A fundamental Burkean contribution to rhetorical studies was the move
away from the traditional association of rhetoric with acts of persuasion ,
and toward the more elaborate idea of rhetoric as the process of identifi ca-
tion , which is rooted in the notion of substance . According to Burke, we
form our sense of selves by our identifications with various symbolic enti-

ties, which may include job titles, leisure activities, religious affi liations,
nationalities, and value systems. All of these symbols are in some respects
abstract ideas, yet they have a power to move bodies that is as real as air
or water, and must be understood to be equally substantial. As we identify
with these things, we become consubstantial with them – we share the same
substance. So, for instance, to be “ American ” is, in one sense, merely to
mentally associate with an idea that has no material foundation – there is
no physical property that makes one literally American the way that a
certain genetic coding makes one human (of course, it can be argued that
even the connection between a genetic sequence and “ humanness ” is a
rhetorical construct with no ultimate basis in truth). However, once you

have identified with the symbolic concept of “ American, ” you are com-

pelled, consciously and unconsciously, to act in specific, physical ways. You
may feel an adrenaline rush of anger as you watch footage of elected

officials betraying the public trust, or experience a flush of warmth when
the national anthem plays before a baseball game. You may be obligated

to kill or be killed in war, or be confined to a cell because you transgressed
American codes of acceptable behavior. Identifications have very real