The Event of Dissension: Reconsidering the Possibilities of Dissent

Abstract

Dissent emerges out of unique prior conditions in which the coherence of dominant discourses is momentarily opened for contest. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, these conditions are conceptualized through the internal gaps and contradictions within dominant discourse—spaces of dissension—and the singular historical circumstances of the Event of dissension. The unique possibilities opened up in the Event of dissension include the prospects for a kind of critical contemplation on the conditions of the present, which Foucault defines as thought. The prospects for thoughtful dissent are considered.

Keywords:

• Dissent
• Dissension
• Event
• Foucault
• Thought

He gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Catherine Thomas, Erin Rand, Barbara Biesecker, and Jeremy Grossman.

He gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Catherine Thomas, Erin Rand, Barbara Biesecker, and Jeremy Grossman.

Notes

[1] Robert L. Ivie, Dissent from War (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2007), 5; Robert L. Ivie, “Toward a Humanizing Style of Democratic Dissent,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 11, no. 3 (2008): 455.

[2] Kendall R. Phillips, “The Spaces of Public Dissension: Reconsidering the Public Sphere,” Communication Monographs 63, no. 3 (1996): 231–48; Kendall R. Phillips, “A Rhetoric of Controversy,” Western Journal of Communication 63, no. 4 (1999): 488–510; Kendall R. Phillips, “Spaces of Invention: Dissension, Freedom and Thought in Foucault,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 34, no. 4 (2002): 328–44.

[3] Ivie discusses the notion of “limited nonconformity” (9). I am interested in what might be considered the tension between the limit and the nonconformity and the prospects of a more “limitless nonconformity.’

[4] I have chosen to capitalize the word Event in order to bring attention to its singular nature.

[5] See my “Rhetoric of Controversy.”

[6] Robert L. Ivie, “Enabling Democratic Dissent,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 46–59.

[7] Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. Alan M. Sheridan (New York, NY: Pantheon), 152.

[8] In part because they are spaces which are, at least in relation to the dominant discourse, impossible, spaces of dissension open up impossible possibilities.

[9] Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 38.

[10] Foucault, Archaeology, 151.

[11] Foucault, Archaeology, 149.

[12] Lloyd Bitzer, “The Rhetorical Situation,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 1, no. 1 (1973): 1–14; Barbara Biesecker, “Rethinking the Rhetorical Situation from Within the Thematic of Differance.” Philosophy & Rhetoric 22, no. 2 (1989): 110–30.

[13] Ivie, “Enabling,” 56.

[14] Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York, NY: Pantheon, 1984), 79.

[15] Ivie, “Enabling,” 51.

[16] See Phillips, “Spaces of Invention.”

[17] Numerous scholars have taken up the notion of the Event since Foucault's writings. See, for example: Alain Badiou, Being and Event, trans. Oliver Feltham (London, UK: Continuum Press, 2005); Gille Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1990); Jacques Derrida, “Typewriter Ribbon,” in Without Alibi, ed. Peggy Kamuf (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 71–160.

[18] Foucault, Archaeology, 25.

[19] Michelle Ballif, “Writing the Event: The Impossible Possibility for Historiography,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 44, no. 3 (2014): 252.

[20] Michel Foucault, “Theatrum Philosophicum” in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald F. Bouchard (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 168.

[21] Foucault, “Theatrum,” 173.

[22] Ballif, “Writing the Event,” 252.

[23] Foucault, “Theatrum,” 176.

[24] Foucault, Archaeology, 101.

[25] For a more thorough discussion of repetition see, Gilles Deleuze, Logic and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1994).

[26] Michel Foucault, “Questions of Method,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, eds. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 76.

[27] Foucault, “Questions of Method,” 77.

[28] Barbara Biesecker, “Michel Foucault and the Question of Rhetoric,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 25, no. 4 (1992): 351.

[29] Foucault, “Theatrum,” 182.

[30] Foucault, “Theatrum,” 185.

[31] Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality, Volume 2, trans. R. Hurley (New York, NY: Pantheon, 1985): 11.

[32] Foucault, “Theatrum,” 190.

[33] Foucault, “Theatrum,”190.

[34] Michel Foucault, Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977–1984 (New York, NY: Routledge, 1988), 155.

[35] Ballif, “Writing,” 253; 252. Ballif recommends an approach to writing the event that embraces a notion of hospitality, a welcoming of the new. The Foucaultian perspective outlined here might recommend a view more derived from an inhospitable reaction to the present, but such a distinction is beyond the scope of the present essay.

[36] Phillips, “Spaces of Invention,” 339.

[37] Ivie, “Enabling,” 56.