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Abstract
Rhetorical agency is the capacity for words and actions to be intelligible and forceful, and to create effects through their formal and stylistic conventions. The polemical discourses of Larry Kramer, a controversial AIDS activist, demonstrate a concurrence of features that define the polemic as a rhetorical form and therefore enable agency: alienating expressions of emotion; non-contingent assertions of truth; presumptions of shared morality; and the constitution of enemies, audiences, and publics. The unexpected uptake of Kramer's texts by academics invites consideration of the polemic as a queer form that resists the assumption of a necessary and predictable relationship between an intending agent and an action's effects. Thus, the polemic highlights the riskiness, unpredictability, and inevitable contingency of agency, and positions queerness itself as the condition of possibility for any rhetorical act.
This essay is derived from a chapter of the author's dissertation, directed by Barbara A. Biesecker and defended at the University of Iowa in 2006.
This essay is derived from a chapter of the author's dissertation, directed by Barbara A. Biesecker and defended at the University of Iowa in 2006.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Barbara A. Biesecker, Charles E. Morris III, David Hingstman, Leslie Hahner, Stephen Hartnett, and G. Mitchell Reyes, as well as Editors David Henry and John Louis Lucaites, and four anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions throughout the development of this essay. The author also appreciates the financial support of the Department of Communication Studies and the student government of the University of Iowa.
Notes
This essay is derived from a chapter of the author's dissertation, directed by Barbara A. Biesecker and defended at the University of Iowa in 2006.
1. Arthur D. Kahn, The Many Faces of Gay: Activists Who Are Changing the Nation (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997), 230–32.
2. I recognize that there is some opposition to the use of the term “queer,” especially in relation to its gendered, raced, and classed implications. While I want to note these criticisms of the biases of “queer,” I use the term here not only because it is the territory of “queer” that is being defined through queer theorists’ rejection of Kramer, but also because the controversy and lack of a clear referent that “queer” implies are valuable and appropriate to my characterization of the undecidability of agency. On “queer” as a contested term, see Brett Beemyn and Mickey Eliason, eds., Queer Studies: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Anthology (New York: New York University Press, 1996); Terry Castle, The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 1–20; Annamarie Jagose, Queer Theory: An Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 101–26; Sheila Jeffreys, “The Queer Disappearance of Lesbians: Sexuality in the Academy,” Women's Studies International Forum 17 (1994): 459–72; Simon Watney, “Homosexual, Gay or Queer? Activism, Outing and the Politics of Sexual Identities,” Outrage, April 1992, 18–22.
3. In the last several years, numerous authors have considered rhetorical agency in various manners in the pages of the Quarterly Journal of Speech. See, for example: Tasha N. Dubriwny, “Consciousness-Raising as Collective Rhetoric: The Articulation of Experience in the Redstockings’ Abortion Speak-out of 1969,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 91 (2005): 395–422; Lisa Keränen, “‘Cause Someday We All Die’: Rhetoric, Agency, and the Case of the ‘Patient’ Preferences Worksheet,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 93 (2007): 179–210; Nathan Stormer, “Articulation: A Working Paper on Rhetoric and Taxis,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 90 (2004): 257–84; Bradford Vivian, “Neoliberal Epideictic: Rhetorical Form and Commemorative Politics on September 11, 2002,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 92 (2006): 1–26; Eric King Watts, “‘Voice’ and ‘Voicelessness’ in Rhetorical Studies,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 87 (2001): 179–96. Issues of rhetorical agency also have been pursued extensively in Rhetoric Society Quarterly (in part responding to the Alliance of Rhetoric Societies’ discussions on the topic); see Cheryl Geisler, “How Ought We to Understand the Concept of Rhetorical Agency? Report from the ARS,” RSQ: Rhetoric Society Quarterly 34 (2004): 9–17; Christian Lundberg and Joshua Gunn, “‘Ouija Board, Are There Any Communications?’ Agency, Ontotheology, and the Death of the Humanist Subject, or, Continuing the ARS Conversation,” RSQ: Rhetoric Society Quarterly 35 (2005): 83–105; Cheryl Geisler, “Teaching the Post-Modern Rhetor: Continuing the Conversation on Rhetorical Agency,” RSQ: Rhetoric Society Quarterly 35 (2005): 107–13.
4. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, “Agency: Promiscuous and Protean,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 2 (2005): 7.
5. Campbell, “Agency,” 7.
6. Campbell, “Agency,” 3.
7. Campbell, “Agency,” 7.
8. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 158.
9. Darrel Enck-Wanzer, “Trashing the System: Social Movement, Intersectional Rhetoric, and Collective Agency in the Young Lords Organization's Garbage Offensive,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 92 (2006): 174–201.
10. By “sites” or “positions” I do not mean to imply literal spaces within institutions. Rather, I am referring to the way in which rhetorical forms can function as nodes within networks of institutional power, and through which agency can be exercised. This is not to deny that power certainly constitutes and regulates literal spaces within institutions, but my primary concern here is with the positioning of discourses within networks of power. For an interesting discussion of the relationship between space, textuality, and the political, see Doreen B. Massey, For Space (London: Sage, 2005).
11. Kramer is known for helping to found both GMHC and ACT UP, but his role in each organization has been controversial. He split with GMHC over a difference of opinion regarding the group's focus, and his claims to being an important founding figure of ACT UP have been hotly disputed by activists and critics alike. See, for example, “ACT UP Capsule History,” ACT UP/New York, http://www.actupny.org/documents/capsule-home.html/; Maxine Wolfe, “Make It Work for You: Academia and Political Organizing in Lesbian and Gay Communities,” ACT UP/New York, http://www.actupny.org/documents/academia.html/.
12. Simon Watney, foreword to Reports from the Holocaust: The Story of an AIDS Activist, by Larry Kramer (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994), xv–xxix; David France, “The Angry Prophet Is Dying,” Newsweek, June 11, 2001, 43; Sarah Bond et al., “Editors’ Choice: Top Ten Crusaders for Social Justice,” INTHEFRAY, November 11, 2003, http://inthefray.com/html/article.php?sid=110&mode=thread&order=0.
13. Activist groups that embraced the new radical queer politics of visibility, spectacle, anti-assimilationism, and camp included ACT UP, Queer Nation, Sex Panic!, and the Lesbian Avengers, to name just a few. For an analysis of the newly emergent queer politics, see Cathy J. Cohen, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 3 (1997): 437–65.
14. Kramer has not ceased to be active and influential in the gay community. On 7 November 2004 he gave a lengthy speech titled “The Tragedy of Today's Gays” at Cooper Union in New York City. Though it began with Kramer's concern about the results of the recent 2004 presidential election, the bulk of this speech—like Kramer's earlier speeches—dealt with the lack of responsibility and organization within the gay community. For a reprint of the speech, see Larry Kramer, “The Tragedy of Today's Gays: An Address to the Gay Community, address given at Cooper Union in New York City, New York, November 7, 2004, http://www.aegis.com/news/MISC/2004/LK041101.html/.
15. Larry Kramer, Reports from the Holocaust: The Story of an AIDS Activist (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994), 413.
16. “Larry Kramer: America's Angriest AIDS Activist,” Advocate, December 1, 1992; France, “Angry Prophet,” 43.
17. Kathryn Thomas Flannery, “The Passion of Conviction: Reclaiming Polemic for a Reading of Second-Wave Feminism,” Rhetoric Review 20 (2001): 113–29; Jonathan Crewe, “Can Polemic Be Ethical? A Response to Michel Foucault,” in Polemic: Critical or Uncritical, ed. Jane Gallop (New York: Routledge, 2004), 135–52. Though anger is the primary emotion generally associated with polemics, Crewe also makes a case for acknowledging the ways in which polemics might be entertaining or comedic. This does not necessarily indicate that the polemic itself is funny or that the speaker intends to be amusing; rather, it emphasizes the tendency for polemics to have unpredictable effects.
18. Kramer, Reports, 45.
19. Flannery, “Passion of Conviction,” 116–17 as borrowed from Kenneth J. E. Graham, The Performance of Conviction: Plainness and Rhetoric in the Early English Renaissance (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 14.
20. Graham, Performance of Conviction, 15–16.
21. Graham, Performance of Conviction, 14.
22. Kramer, Reports, 448.
23. In an essay about Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, John Angus Campbell contends that the “intensely personal” quality of Darwin's work creates a bond between the author and his readers and presents a reality that is “not only objective, but personal.” John Angus Campbell, “The Polemical Mr. Darwin,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 61 (1975): 385.
24. Perhaps best known for his groundbreaking book, The Celluloid Closet, Russo died of AIDS in 1990.
25. Kramer, Reports, 369.
26. Kramer, Reports, 371.
27. Kramer, Reports, 372.
28. Michel Foucault, “Polemics, Politics, and Problematizations: An Interview with Michel Foucault” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 381.
29. Kramer, Reports, xxxiii.
30. Kramer, Reports, xxxiii.
31. Watney, “Foreword,” xviii; France, “Angry Prophet,” 43.
32. Kramer, Reports, xxxiii.
33. Kramer, Reports, 450.
34. Campbell, “Polemical Mr. Darwin,” 387.
35. Flannery, “Passion of Conviction,” 120.
36. Edwin Black, “The Second Persona,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 56 (1970): 109–19; Philip Wander, “The Third Persona: An Ideological Turn in Rhetorical Theory,” Central States Speech Journal 35 (1984): 197–216; Charles E. Morris III, “Pink Herring and the Fourth Persona: J. Edgar Hoover's Sex Crime Panic,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 88 (2002): 228–44.
37. Foucault, “Polemics, Politics, and Problematizations,” 382.
38. Kramer, Reports, 46.
39. Kramer, Reports, 450.
40. Foucault, “Polemics, Politics, and Problematizations,” 382.
41. Flannery, “Passion of Conviction,” 122.
42. See, for example, Douglas Crimp, “Sex and Sensibility, or Sense and Sexuality,” in Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 281–301; and Michael Warner, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).
43. Flannery, “Passion of Conviction,” 127.
44. John H. Smith, “Rhetorical Polemics and the Dialectics of Kritik in Hegel's Jena Essays,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 18 (1985): 31–57.
45. Smith, “Rhetorical Polemics,” 35.
46. Benjamin Arditi and Jeremy Valentine, Polemicization: The Contingency of the Commonplace (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 137.
47. Arditi and Valentine, Polemicization, 137.
48. Michael Warner, “Publics and Counterpublics,” Public Culture 14 (2002): 51.
49. Warner, “Publics and Counterpublics,” 51.
50. The notion of “effectivity” that I employ is borrowed from Grossberg's explanation of “the multidimensionality of effects … the connections that exist between disparate points as they traverse different planes of realms of effects,” as well as Foucault's concept of “dispersion” and Miller's discussion of the conjunctural practices of institutional uptake. See Lawrence Grossberg, We Gotta Get Out of This Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture (New York: Routledge, 1992), 50–51; Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972), 37–39, 71–76; Toby Miller, Well-Tempered Self: Citizenship, Culture, and the Postmodern Subject (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 173–217.
51. Lloyd Bitzer argues that forms arise from recurring rhetorical situations, and influence what can be said in a given situation as well as how an audience comes to understand or make sense of what is said. See Lloyd F. Bitzer, “The Rhetorical Situation,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 1 (1968): 13.
52. Kenneth Burke, “Lexicon Rhetoricae,” in Counter-Statement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1931), 157.
53. Douglas Crimp, “How to Have Promiscuity in an Epidemic,” in Melancholia and Moralism, 56–57.
54. Crimp, “Sex and Sensibility,” 286.
55. Crimp, “Sex and Sensibility,” 287.
56. Lee Edelman, “The Mirror and the Tank,” in Homographesis: Essays in Gay Literary and Cultural Theory (New York: Routledge, 1994), 107. First quote from Kramer, “Who Killed Vito Russo?” OutWeek 86, February 20, 1991, 26. Second quote from Patrick Buchanan, New York Post, June 26, 1991, cited in “Media Watch: Buchanan on Essex,” New York Native, 429, July 8, 1991, 15.
57. See, for example: Robert Scheer, “AIDS Stigma Hampering a Solution,” Los Angeles Times, November 28, 1986; Susan Yoachum, “Buchanan Calls AIDS ‘Retribution:’ Gays Angered by His Bid to Win Bible Belt Votes,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 28, 1992.
58. Edelman, “Mirror and the Tank,” 107.
59. The designation of a body of work as “queer theory” has occurred only retrospectively and I do not mean to attribute to queer theorists a coherent position in regard to Kramer's polemics or queer politics. See, for example, Douglas Crimp's critique of Edelman's treatment of ACT UP's “Silence=Death” symbol in “Mourning and Militancy,” in Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on Aids and Queer Politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 129–49.
60. Edelman, “Homographesis,” 6.
61. Edelman, “Homographesis,” 7.
62. For other treatments of the ways that language reveals and reproduces norms of sexuality, see: Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990); Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. I: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1978); Gayle Rubin, “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, ed. Carole S. Vance (London, UK: Pandora Press, 1992), 267–319; Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind and Other Essays (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1992).
63. As Gayatri Spivak puts it in The Post Colonial Critic, being able to act requires that “the subject is always centered as a subject.” She later noted that agency arises from a metonymic process of displacement, an essentializing move whereby one emerges as an agent only insofar as a part of oneself stands in for the whole. See Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues, ed. Sarah Harasym (New York: Routledge, 1990), 104; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Agency” (lecture given at University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, 4 October 2004).
64. Jacques Derrida, “Signature Event Context,” in Limited Inc, trans. Samuel Weber and Jeffrey Mehlman (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 17.
65. Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York: Routledge, 1997), 38.
66. Indeed, this possibility for failure both plagues and animates the force and meaning of all language; it is not that failure is unique to polemics, but that the vehemence of polemics makes their failures all the more dramatic. For more on the inherent failures of language and meaning, see J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962); Butler, Excitable Speech; Derrida, Limited Inc; Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, trans. Margaret Waller (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984); Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960).
67. Arditi and Valentine, Polemicization, 33.
68. Derrida, “Signature,” 7.
69. Derrida, “Signature,” 12.