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03/10/2005 Archived Entry: ""

Theoretical Fiction
My reading habits have become more and more like what Steve calls "theoretical fictions." The arguments and figures become fictions, Barthes-like mythologies, variations of what Kodwo Eshun calls "sonic fiction": an all inclusive juxtapatory reading/writing practice (not just the text, but everything related to the text).
So as I join the carnival late, I'm tempted to offer a different kind of reading than the already useful and detailed ones Byron and Collin give.
My first issue is with Booth himself. Booth is a character in my own Rhetoric of Cool, a figure who in 1963 pens the "rhetorical stance." The rhetorical stance is

a stance which depends on discovering and maintaining in any writing situation a proper balance among the three elements that are at work in any communicative effort: the available arguments about the subject itself, the interests and peculiarities of the audience, and the voice, the implied character of the speaker. I should like to suggest that it is this balance, this rhetorical stance, difficult it is to describe, that is our main goal as teachers of rhetoric.

And we still see that thinking in The Rhetoric of Rhetoric. In Booth's call for "common understanding" and "listening rhetoric," I hear that call for balance. But balance disturbs me (leaves me unbalanced?). The call for balance is a move to put down dissent/disagreement/dissonance. Dissent is about shifting balance, upsetting balance, kicking the jams out. It’s Monk and Sun Ra and Coleman and Coltrane creating a rhetoric of notes breaking up in your ears. It’s Lee Perry “upsetting.”

Booth writes in The Rhetoric of Rhetoric:

All major rhetoricians have argued that what is clearly unethical is to repudiate your main points or deepest beliefs solely for the purpose of winning an audience.

In a world where win-rhetoric of the thoughtless or vicious kind seems to triumph more and more, from top politicians and CEOs down to the talk shows, and where too much LR (listening rhetoric) produces nothing better than self-censorship, the training of everyone to pursue critically the defensible kinds of rhetoric is one of our best hopes for saving the world – or at least this or that corner of it

The statements seem so right, no? How can you argue with the desire to hold true to your deepest convictions or even, gasp, save the world! But, of course, such is the rhetoric of all dominating systems of thought. Deepest convictions are generated by, among other things, cultural dominance. “Work Hard and You Will Succeed.” A deep conviction? “Segregation is Justified.” A deep conviction? Are they innate beliefs we should never repudiate?
Storm the Reality Studio, Burroughs writes.
“Photo falling – Word Falling – Break Through in Grey Room – Towers open fire”
No middle ground/no listening in Burroughs’ media-rhetoric. Indeed, listening is mixed, jumbled, juxtaposed. It’s found in the Subliminal Kid “listening” through his sampled tape recordings of bars, political speeches, literary texts, and playing them back in various orders.
The Booth LR is more likely found in listservs, like WPA, where argument is quickly dismissed for agreement/can’t we all get along posts or disclaimers that nothing was really at stake anyway (after much heated discussion: “I’m enjoying this discussion” or “Maybe we can have it both ways” or “Hey, let’s not come down hard on this troll. We should hear him out first.”). Booth is like a composition textbook: Find both sides of the argument and create the middle ground. Then a MLK excerpt is offered as example (What about King’s notion of extremism? Oops.).
More later.