Bloody Rhetoric and Civic Unrest: Rhetorical Aims of Human Blood Splashing in the 2010 Thai Political Revolt

ABSTRACT

In 2010, thousands of Thai citizens from the Red Shirt Movement splashed seventy-nine gallons of their blood in Bangkok to revolt for democracy. I argue that their conduct exemplified kaya karma in the Thai culture: the intentional use of the body and physical actions to achieve an end. Drawing upon my interviews with protesters in Thailand, I show how the demonstration represented the Red Shirts’ intentions to construct a patriotic identity; build solidarity and consubstantiation; defame the prime minister; and invoke fear, intimidation, and discomfort in the government. Altogether, the protest aimed to bolster the movement’s authority and disparage the government. Examining the Red Shirts’ kaya karma, I contend, enables us to further engage “the facts of nonusage” to broaden the trajectory of comparative rhetorical studies beyond the focus on canonical texts of elite exemplars and complicate our ability to see the available means of persuasion in non-Western contexts.

Acknowledgments

I thank editor Art Walzer and the anonymous reviewers for their clear, insightful, and constructive suggestions, which improved the focus, clarity, and theoretical sharpness of this article. I also want to thank all Thai participants, whose time and assistance made this study possible. Many thanks also to LuMing Mao, Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson, Jane Donawerth, Scott Wible, and Doug Kern for their encouraging feedback on earlier drafts.

Notes

1. This challenge continues to be a concern. For instance, the most recent edition of Charles E. Morris III and Stephen Howard Browne’s popular anthology Readings on the Rhetoric of Social Protest, which aims to offer “a rich but dispersed literature on the subject … [and] highlight key theoretical, historical, and critical developments” and in which Cox and Foust’s critique is anthologized, does not feature an article on protest rhetoric outside the West (xiii). While the editors expanded the bibliography section to include works on Arab Spring and Latina/o movements, Western protests remain the focus of the anthology. Similarly, Foust’s (2010) book Transgression as a Mode of Resistance also focuses on Western context. Bowers et al.’s Rhetoric of Agitation and Control also primarily cites case studies in America and the West.

2. Observing the Thai convention, I use the first name to refer to a Thai person in both the essay and citations. Pseudonyms are employed for interviewees.

3. I am using this word as a double entendre to refer to the makeup and the act of creating rhetoric.