Inessential Solidarity: Rhetoric and Foreigner Relations

Introduction: A Rhetoric of Responsibility

i n t r o d u c t i o n : a r h e t o r i c o f r e s p o n s i b i l i t y  I n t r o d u c t i o n A Rhetoric of Responsibility But communication would be impossible if it should have to begin in the ego, a free subject, to whom every other would only be a limitation that invites war, domination, precaution and information. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being The unconditionality of being hostage is not the limit case of solidarity, but the condition for all solidarity. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being In A Rhetoric of Motives, Kenneth Burke makes a point that perhaps goes without saying in rhetorical studies today: belonging is fundamentally rhetorical (27–28). That insight will serve as the thesis of this present work, but with a twist. According to Burke, belonging is not fixed ontologically by a shared essence but is instead a function of rhetorical identification, which is itself an effect of shared symbol systems. Scholars in rhetorical studies generally accept this elemental insight: what is common among those who “belong together” does not constitute an essence. What is common among the members of a nation, an ethnic group, a gang, or even a family operates not ontologically but symbolically—“blood” every bit as much as “native soil,” “cultural history,” and “turf colors.” Nonetheless, inasmuch as what is common is identified as a condition for belonging, inasmuch as it symbolizes a bond or property that is shared by otherwise discrete “individuals,” it is both retroactively essentialized and grounded in the presumption of a prior essence. The field remains mostly unaware of or unconcerned with an intersection of rhetoric and solidarity that neither references a preexisting essence of the individual (organism) nor installs, as a product of human work, an essence of the community (of the “common”).1 1 Davis Text 1••-000.indd 1 8/30/10 11:53:39 AM i n t r o d u c t i o n : a r h e t o r i c o f r e s p o n s i b i l i t y  Inthepagesthatfollow,theprimarygoalwillbetoexposeasortofcommonality oblivious to borders (a débordement) that precedes and exceeds symbolic identificationandthereforeanyprerequisiteforbelonging;or,putanotherway: the goal is to expose an originary (or preoriginary) rhetoricity—an affectability or persuadability—that is the condition for symbolic action. I get how this may sound, but I’m not going mystical or even particularly abstract on you here. By definition, communication can take place only among existents who are given over to an “outside,” exposed, open to the other’s affection and effraction. And this “community,” without essence or project, this foreign(er) relation irreducible to symbolic prereqs, will be the primary focus of our investigation. Let me say provisionally that what’s at stake in this exposition of exposedness is the affirmation of a “rhetorical power,” as Steven Mailloux might put it, that is not the effect of representation (conscious or unconscious). As anyone who has irrepressibly tapped her foot to an unfamiliar tune will acknowledge, “persuasion ” frequently succeeds without presenting itself to cognitive scrutiny. The fact that this extra-symbolic rhetoricity remains irreducible to epistemological frame-ups makes it no less powerful, no less fundamental, no less significant to rhetorical studies. By pulling into focus this always prior rhetoricity that is the condition for what is called the “art” of rhetoric, I intend neither to drown “little rhetoric” in the sea of “big rhetoric” nor to subordinate rhetorical practice to rhetorical theory. I hope, rather, to begin to articulate a different sort of task for rhetorical studies, a theoretical task indissociable from its practical implementation. The task: to examine the implications of this always prior relation to the foreign(er) without which no meaning-making or determinate (symbolic) relation would be possible. I hope, that is, to nudge rhetorical studies beyond the epistemological concerns that have for so long circumscribed our theories of persuasion toward the examination of a more fundamental affectability, persuadability, responsivity . What would it mean for rhetorical practice, theory, and analysis if we were to acknowledge that communication in the most simplistic sense—as symbolic exchange—does not first of all lead to solidarity or “community” but instead remains utterly dependent upon a sharing and a response-ability that precede it? What would it mean for the field’s focus if...