The New York Sophist

Rhetoric outlived ancient Athens, Ancient Greece as a whole. Rhetoric outlived Imperial China, Maoism, and is at the table as China develops as a global economic power. Rhetoric outlived the Russian tsars. Rhetoric outlived the Russian Communists. It outlived the Soviet Union. It outlived Rome, as a republic, and an empire. It outlived the Holy Roman Emperor. It outlived the age of imperialism, the Bolsheviks, two world wars, and numerous global conflicts. Rhetoric was alive and well at the formation of the European Union, and is alive and well now when that Union is being questioned. Rhetoric was present at the Continental Congress, and will be around long after the collapse of the United States. 

But where was rhetoric during the Presidential Debates?

Professional rhetoricians, at least on twitter, would rather be the Political Science Auxiliary Club then forward their own ancient, deep art. Rhetoricians linking fact-checking websites, and declaring winners because a policy is better than another one or “would work,” or because a candidate was “lying” seem to indicate that contemporary rhetoricians are not that interested, or proud of their ancient art. At the very least, it indicates that rhetoric has nothing unique or special to say about Presidential debating. More accurately, it shows how much suspicion, mistrust, and doubt even rhetoric’s deepest adherents have about a rhetorical perspective, even given rhetoric’s undeniable power in human affairs. 

To those scholars I ask: Where’s your fidelity? To your own personal political view? To the journalists who say pretty much what you are saying? Or is it to this ancient art that we have dedicated our lives to studying? Where’s your (he)art?

I have been teaching Plato’s dialogue Gorgias in my undergraduate courses, which has me thinking about suspicions about rhetoric’s value. Gorgias is quite comfortable saying that rhetoric is the best of all human arts, because it constitutes their value. Socrates is panicked about locating the “thing” that rhetoric is about: his teaching relies on “thing-ness” or “being” something in order to teach it; this is where the good of something lives. For some reason, we appear to be more comfortable with rhetoric’s detractor than we are with rhetoric’s master teacher. When political events appear, rhetoricians pretend to be political scientists or journalists. We are frightened about what we are, so we rush to “seem” to be something else. What would happen if we occupied our rhetoric being? What would happen if we adopted the perspective of rhetoric as the art of seeming? Of seeming to be? Of positionality? Of crafting the frames of meaning? Nope, wait, time to tweet about political fact-check again. . .

During the debates, rhetoricians become very suspicious of their own art. They talk about the debates in terms of facts, of thing-ness, of good and bad in universal terms. They take on the mantle of the journalist; of the political scientist. Where’s the mantle of the rhetorician? We should know better. We preach that if rhetoric is a knack, a bag of tricks, Socrates is the chief trickster. But when the rubber meets the road, we adopt his critique wholesale in our own public performances.

Most of the year, rhetorical scholarship is ignored. When we have a chance to forward what rhetorical scholarship can say about the dizzying roles of rhetoric, we balk. We become the junior journalist’s society. We become the political science glee club. The history of rhetoric has been one that could be characterized as fighting against positioning rhetoric as a servile art, an art that works to convey the truth, facts, and value of other disciplines. We erase that struggle, that history, when we defer to journalistic opinion in our public statements. 

The distrust in rhetoric runs deep; look at how we treat public speaking courses: best avoided by serious scholars. Most rhetoric scholars today do not have much interest in an idea that is gaining traction globally, the idea of oralcy – a sort of literacy competence for the auditory/oral creation of texts. Public speaking is still nearly universally taught as mastering modalities that would have been easily recognized by anyone from the 18th century. At my university, public speaking instructors fight over the limited number of podiums available, as if this was a requirement for speech instruction like a bunsen burner would be for a chemistry lab. There’s little critical interrogation of the form, or the pedagogy, of this art. And it’s symptomatic across the board. If rhetoricians don’t think that rhetoric is the most important art, or the art that has something unique to say about oral communication, then there’s little hope that others will see rhetorical studies as valuable either. The way we treat our foundation impacts how we are able to advance our view into the public. 

These same scholars who gleefully point out contradictions, fact-check websites, and judge the efficaciousness of a policy option suggested by a candidate also are first in line to complain that rhetoric journals are not cited by other fields.  They wonder why their research is not seen as valuable by historians, sociologists, and others. After all, we are all talking about the very same objects, texts, peoples, and events. Why not collaborate? The reason is that we have no clear foundation. We have no clear first principle. We’ve abandoned it; we don’t think public speaking is a serious course. We think argumentation should be taught by “debate people” on contract lines. We base our art on foundations for other fields: History, literary studies, critical theory. We don’t collaborate our own theories with those ideas, we supplant them.

When you can’t distinguish the unique take your field has on an event that most would agree is at the heart of your discipline, that is internationally broadcast, and that is watched by over 100 million people, you have bigger problems than citations. You fundamentally do not trust your art. You fundamentally are suspicious of the power of your art to stand next to the fields that traditionally have unquestioned value. You fundamentally think that journalism is a better hermeneutic for understanding the debates than the 2,500 year old tradition of studying how deeply human beings depend on words to craft meaningful existence.

Perhaps I’m a bit too sophistic for most reading this, but I really do not understand and will never understand the tectonic divestment we as a field have made from studying the oral production of texts. This is our way in to larger conversations across disciplines; this is our unique take. We are not mere speech teachers (a mantle I really like) but instead we should be the champions of thinking of speech as hermeneutic. Speech is a perspective. Rhetoric is a perspective that lets in certain observations and critiques. Or we can keep re-tweeting fact-checking journalism websites and pointing out “lies” and play journalist, while rolling our eyes each time NPR has a psychologist on to explain persuasion. Our inability to treat our foundational courses seriously is the reason why journalists do not take our field seriously. Our mistrust of our roots is communicated in how we speak about our art, or fail to when the moment is right.

Our fidelity should not be to a party, or parties, or even to the United States. Rhetoric helped build, helped dismantle, and outlasted every great empire the Earth has hosted. It will outlive Trump and Clinton, you and me, the Constitution, and the United States. No art is simultaneously involved in the production and criticism of human affairs at the core like this. Rhetoric is our art. We are the only ones who study it. We should not be so skittish about this powerful force that we adopt a journalistic paradigm when we publicly communicate about rhetorical events. 

Here’s my full analysis which was posted on the great ElectionDebates Website, but some had to be removed. This is the full version of what I wrote: 

Presidential debate scholar Sydney Krause argued that Presidential debates are “joint press conferences.” This seems like an insult to those of us who think debate is an incredibly valuable form of discourse in society. But Krause’s point is not an insult. It is a warning. Krause, as many others after him, have articulated the many elements missing from Presidential debates that are necessary for debate. But the point goes further than simple accuracy. If we treat these events as debates even if they do not contain enough elements to be debates, we risk seeing what we want to, or re-assembling the event to match our expectations of reason and argument. Said in a shorter way, if you think there’s a pattern there, you’ll find one.

It’s not appropriate or productive to consider these events as debates in any formal sense. There’s no productive disagreement, i.e. there is no possibility for either speaker to have any place from which to advance or defend positions because neither is asked to take a position on a controversial issue. The question “Who is best suited to be President?” is not a debatable motion, because it can be answered in a way that avoids any engagement with the answer from the other side. There are no judges. There are no standards for evidence or proof. There’s no formal topic with which to agree or disagree. They cannot be debates, unless we wish to strip out of debates all the elements that make them different from arguing, speech, informing, negotiating, or discussing.

But these are valuable, important events. We do not discount their importance by pointing out they are not debates. The attribution is important; if we call them debates we limit our ability to respond appropriately to the entire spectrum of the event, searching for any utterances we can twist or push into the form of a reason or argument. These forms are too limited for events that do not correspond with argument and debate, and they strip away rich elements of the performance that are critical to our judgement of the candidates. Consider them situations where the candidates are required to produce agonistic rhetoric in the context of what they are being asked in the presence of their opponent. They are not addressing their opponent’s argument in a meaningful sense; they are creating argumentative speech in an unusual context for us to use to judge their ability to be President.

With that perspective, here’s my analysis of the first debate.

Both candidates had difficulty in speaking on two important issues: Framing the debate, i.e. What tools should we use to decide who won? And establishing principles, i.e. here are the things I stand for or ask myself when I’m thinking about Presidential issues. Debaters in this format need to remember it’s not about facts/truth/rightness but more about generating discourse that establishes how you think, reason, and judge. People are watching this, not machines. They will look for moments where they can identify with candidates, seeing their own reasoning present in the rhetoric of the candidate. Identification with how someone expresses reason will always beat factual accuracy in these events.

Clinton was doing well with this until she decided to attack Trump’s business practices. Turning the debate into an attack on Trump allowed him time to make some rational arguments in his comfort zone. Better to keep him fragmented and blaming “politicians” rather than sounding good on his own reasoning for running his business his way. He was not establishing principles or frameworks at all, but placing blame. Clinton’s attack inadvertently allowed him time to generate some rationalizing rhetoric to compete with her tone.

Trump should have spent a lot more time discussing infrastructure and how the US government sells this out via political deals to benefit career politicians. This argument might work pretty well for his supporters, but not in this context.  Trump needs more vision, and more principled explanation as to why he would reform taxes or improve infrastructure in those ways. Too often he blamed the current system when he could be establishing his position better.

On race relations, Trump did well using the phrase “Law & Order” without going into too much detail. Clinton did better here discussing the difficulties of doing police work and providing safety while not violating the rights of the people who live in tough areas. Trump was behind on this discussion talking more about his experiences and less about his judgement. Again, framing and principles, although loose, were more established by Clinton.

The biggest error in the debate was when Lester Holt challenged Trump on the facticity of the Stop and Frisk judgement. Instead, he should have asked Trump his thoughts about the ruling, or if he would agree with the legal reasoning behind such a judgement. This would have helped the audience with judgement a lot more than simply going back and forth on the fact itself. Clinton should have pointed out that this reasoning isn’t fit for someone who is President. One has to reason situationally to be President, she could argue. Trump favors the idea that a businessman’s mode of reason is a one-size-fits-all solution. This can be persuasive, but he needs to be more comparative on judgement to win it.

On security and nuclear weapons, Clinton did a much better job of establishing the principles of how she thinks about bilateral defense treaties, NATO, and nuclear weapons. Trump attacked the Iran treaty, but did not establish his own framework. This was a mistake – he should have set out his own thoughts first. His statement near the end would have been good: “I’m a businessman, not a politician. Here’s how I think.” This helps his statements about politicians being poor thinkers en masse make more sense.

The other topics such as the birther issue and Clinton’s appearance don’t seem as relevant to me as the other issues were, but on those Clinton’s responses were more attacks than anything else. It is probably justified, but a missed opportunity to compare modes of thought between the two people who could serve as President.

Clinton did a better job of generating valuable rhetoric in this debate, so I would declare her the “winner.”

Here’s my full analysis which was posted on the great ElectionDebates Website, but some had to be removed. This is the full version of what I wrote: 

Presidential debate scholar Sydney Krause argued that Presidential debates are “joint press conferences.” This seems like an insult to those of us who think debate is an incredibly valuable form of discourse in society. But Krause’s point is not an insult. It is a warning. Krause, as many others after him, have articulated the many elements missing from Presidential debates that are necessary for debate. But the point goes further than simple accuracy. If we treat these events as debates even if they do not contain enough elements to be debates, we risk seeing what we want to, or re-assembling the event to match our expectations of reason and argument. Said in a shorter way, if you think there’s a pattern there, you’ll find one.

It’s not appropriate or productive to consider these events as debates in any formal sense. There’s no productive disagreement, i.e. there is no possibility for either speaker to have any place from which to advance or defend positions because neither is asked to take a position on a controversial issue. The question “Who is best suited to be President?” is not a debatable motion, because it can be answered in a way that avoids any engagement with the answer from the other side. There are no judges. There are no standards for evidence or proof. There’s no formal topic with which to agree or disagree. They cannot be debates, unless we wish to strip out of debates all the elements that make them different from arguing, speech, informing, negotiating, or discussing.

But these are valuable, important events. We do not discount their importance by pointing out they are not debates. The attribution is important; if we call them debates we limit our ability to respond appropriately to the entire spectrum of the event, searching for any utterances we can twist or push into the form of a reason or argument. These forms are too limited for events that do not correspond with argument and debate, and they strip away rich elements of the performance that are critical to our judgement of the candidates. Consider them situations where the candidates are required to produce agonistic rhetoric in the context of what they are being asked in the presence of their opponent. They are not addressing their opponent’s argument in a meaningful sense; they are creating argumentative speech in an unusual context for us to use to judge their ability to be President.

With that perspective, here’s my analysis of the first debate.

Both candidates had difficulty in speaking on two important issues: Framing the debate, i.e. What tools should we use to decide who won? And establishing principles, i.e. here are the things I stand for or ask myself when I’m thinking about Presidential issues. Debaters in this format need to remember it’s not about facts/truth/rightness but more about generating discourse that establishes how you think, reason, and judge. People are watching this, not machines. They will look for moments where they can identify with candidates, seeing their own reasoning present in the rhetoric of the candidate. Identification with how someone expresses reason will always beat factual accuracy in these events.

Clinton was doing well with this until she decided to attack Trump’s business practices. Turning the debate into an attack on Trump allowed him time to make some rational arguments in his comfort zone. Better to keep him fragmented and blaming “politicians” rather than sounding good on his own reasoning for running his business his way. He was not establishing principles or frameworks at all, but placing blame. Clinton’s attack inadvertently allowed him time to generate some rationalizing rhetoric to compete with her tone.

Trump should have spent a lot more time discussing infrastructure and how the US government sells this out via political deals to benefit career politicians. This argument might work pretty well for his supporters, but not in this context.  Trump needs more vision, and more principled explanation as to why he would reform taxes or improve infrastructure in those ways. Too often he blamed the current system when he could be establishing his position better.

On race relations, Trump did well using the phrase “Law & Order” without going into too much detail. Clinton did better here discussing the difficulties of doing police work and providing safety while not violating the rights of the people who live in tough areas. Trump was behind on this discussion talking more about his experiences and less about his judgement. Again, framing and principles, although loose, were more established by Clinton.

The biggest error in the debate was when Lester Holt challenged Trump on the facticity of the Stop and Frisk judgement. Instead, he should have asked Trump his thoughts about the ruling, or if he would agree with the legal reasoning behind such a judgement. This would have helped the audience with judgement a lot more than simply going back and forth on the fact itself. Clinton should have pointed out that this reasoning isn’t fit for someone who is President. One has to reason situationally to be President, she could argue. Trump favors the idea that a businessman’s mode of reason is a one-size-fits-all solution. This can be persuasive, but he needs to be more comparative on judgement to win it.

On security and nuclear weapons, Clinton did a much better job of establishing the principles of how she thinks about bilateral defense treaties, NATO, and nuclear weapons. Trump attacked the Iran treaty, but did not establish his own framework. This was a mistake – he should have set out his own thoughts first. His statement near the end would have been good: “I’m a businessman, not a politician. Here’s how I think.” This helps his statements about politicians being poor thinkers en masse make more sense.

The other topics such as the birther issue and Clinton’s appearance don’t seem as relevant to me as the other issues were, but on those Clinton’s responses were more attacks than anything else. It is probably justified, but a missed opportunity to compare modes of thought between the two people who could serve as President.

Clinton did a better job of generating valuable rhetoric in this debate, so I would declare her the “winner.”

The time has come as it does every few years where I must watch most everyone destroy and mock the thing I’ve spent most of my life trying to understand. Debate appears to most as a very simple operation of placing facts on a conveyor belt and turning it on. The facts then go down the line and are delivered to the audience. And this is not just a model that journalists shill for. A senior faculty member of my university asked me in passing the other day, “What’s more important in debating: Facts or skill in saying things?” As if the past 30 years of critical theory, philosophy, linguistics, literary studies, anthropology, history, economics, ad nauseam had not been pointing at this distinction as somewhat meaningless. At the very least, it’s not a good starting place for figuring out what debate  is. 

Everyone seems to know; nobody seems to know. I’m reminded as I write about the recent long essay The Hatred of Poetry which I blogged about last month. The Love of Debating would be a good counterpoint title for a very small series about complex forms of rhetoric that don’t get a lot of attention and are considered obvious in their means and method. I don’t like participating in events around Presidential debates nor do I like commenting on them, but I feel a weird sense of responsibility to say something about them every time they come creeping around. It’s almost like a stop and frisk policy for discourse: I’m pretty sure everything labeled debate is criminal on suspicion so I shake it down. Maybe not the best policy at all.

Tonight I have to type something up about the debates so I’ll most likely link it here. So far I’ve been thinking about the value of these events if they were not called debates, or if we understood the media idea of debate in different terms. I am leaning toward calling them antagonistic epideictic events, much like Sydney Krause’s famous conclusion to his research that these are “joint press conferences.” This sounds like an insult, but is pretty constructive: Think of them as press events where the opponent is present and can engage with whatever is said through their own speech. This doesn’t make them debates, but rich texts for us to judge and evaluate, thinking about how these people interact in situations where they are measuring response. It’s the opposite of a campaign speech, and a nice counter to it. 

There’s a nice moment in teaching, somewhere around May when the exams are nearly graded and the summer is before you where you start to think about the possibilities of next fall’s courses. 

It’s a lovely time, but a dangerous one, at least it is for me. We have strict rules at our University, spurred by the State of New York, that students need to have the earliest possible access to the book list for your course in order to save money. A good idea, I suppose, although none of my students take advantage of it. They are always buying the books the first week regardless. 

The danger here is that I start to dream. I fantasize about the cool things I can do since I have months to plan it out. The perception of endless time rolling out before me is seductive. I plan these amazing courses that require me to re-plan my course pretty much every term. And I am not sure I do a good job of it. It’s always almost here, and then suddenly, it’s here, and I have not done all the copious note taking and lecture planning I assigned myself the first week of June.

I had to change my perspective pretty early on when engaging this form of teaching, constantly being refreshed. I get inspired by new things I’ve read or been exposed to, and I assign a lot of reading that I have not done multiple times. I feel pretty ill equipped and a bit panicked at the idea of teaching such material.

This anxiety and fear is based on a model of teaching that is, without question, impoverished. Who can say they are the one who knows? From what posture can you be certain that you have a grasp of it? Perhaps the democratization of who can know is the approach to take here. That is, the students and the teacher are co-investigators, reading and questioning in order to generate principles for the recognition of knowledge, rather than the reiteration of the already-known. 

Dredging up the signs and symbols that master the order of knowing is uncomfortable. Knowing the right answer and questioning your students until one accidentally says it is comfortable. It’s familiar at least, and nobody wants to be the leader into an unfamiliar scene. We do have people like this though- they are called Principle Investigators, and they run labs over in the hard-science area of your university. No, I don’t spend any time over there either. And I rarely see them. 

A principle investigator does not know what she will find, but has a plan on how to look. And she teaches that plan and those procedures to the students working the problem with her in the lab. Anyone can generate knowledge; actually, they are all expected to do so. Conducting the daily work of the lab is the generation and creation of knowledge. Sometimes, that knowledge upsets the principle of organization, sometimes it reveals it, sometimes it does neither, and the problem must be addressed again, from a different perspective. 

Why not approach many courses this way? I am doing so this term, with semi-unfamiliar texts and strange assignments where I am not sure what will be offered. But I hope that between us we can generate something valuable.

The desire for freshness in college teaching is a good one – it’s expected by the students, it keeps the professor on her toes, and the administration seems to think such moves help the university weather the current retention storm. Is re-designing a course “engagement” in the way that all these groups think of it? There certainly can be too much reliance on the new, or the trendy. But asking questions, and having students ask and address questions where you as the teacher don’t know how to respond – that never goes out of style.