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ABSTRACT
While critical scholars often focus on the ontological boundaries of rhetoric and violence, this article analyzes the rhetoric/violence relationship from the perspective of cultural governance. It builds upon earlier work in rhetoric and civility to analyze how authorities and institutions cultivate deliberative rhetorical norms as a means of regulating citizens’ political conduct. The rhetoric/violence opposition is used as a police logic to suppress radical political action. This police logic is used to suppress physical violence and to expand violence’s conceptual domain. As a result, certain subjects are marked as violent and are, therefore, singled out for suppression and criminalization.
Notes
1 John Devine, Maximum Security: The Culture of Violence in Inner-City Schools (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 2.
2 Toby Miller, “Althusser, Foucault, and the Subject of Civility,” Studies in 20th Century Literature 18, no. 1 (1994): 97–117.
3 Deirdre McCloskey, “This Prof. Will Challenge Your Perspective on Free Speech,” LearnLiberty.org, November 26, 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkyk7ncuxC4 (accessed December 22, 2021).
4 See, for example, the 2013 Quarterly Journal of Speech forum The Violence of Rhetoric, including Jeremy Engels, “Introduction to the Forum on the Violence of Rhetoric,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 99, no. 2 (2013): 180–1. See also the 2019 Rhetoric Society Quarterly forum on demagoguery, Rhetoric’s Demagogue | Demagoguery’s Rhetoric, including Ryan Skinnell and Jillian Murphy, “Rhetoric’s Demagogue | Demagoguery’s Rhetoric: An Introduction,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 49, no. 3 (2019): 225–32.
5 See Jeremy Engels’ arguments about neoliberalism’s structures of violence in The Politics of Resentment: A Genealogy (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015); also see Ersula Ore, Lynching: Violence, Rhetoric, and American Identity (Oxford, MS: University Press of Mississippi); also see Joshua Reeves, “License to Kill: Trayvon Martin and the Logic of Exception,” Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 15, no. 4 (2015): 287–91.
6 Ian Hunter, Culture and Government: The Emergence of Literary Education (London: Macmillan, 1988), 256.
7 Tony Bennett, “Putting Policy into Cultural Studies,” in Cultural Studies, eds. Larry Grossberg, Craig Nelson, and Paula Treichler (New York, NY: Routledge, 1992), 26. Quoted in Jack Z. Bratich, Jeremy Packer, and Cameron McCarthy, “Governing the Present,” in Foucault, Cultural Studies, and Governmentality, eds. Jack Z. Bratich, Jeremy Packer, and Cameron McCarthy (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003), 6.
8 Ronald Walter Greene, “Rhetorical Materialism: The Rhetorical Subject and the General Intellect,” in Rhetoric, Materiality, and Politics, eds. Barbara A. Biesecker and John Louis Lucaites (New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2009).
9 James Crosswhite, Deep Rhetoric: Philosophy, Reason, Violence, Justice, Wisdom (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 134.
10 See Joshua Reeves, Citizen Spies: The Long Rise of America’s Surveillance Society (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2017).
11 Kevin Roberts, “‘Mostly Peaceful’ Lets Black Lives Matter off the Hook for Real Violence,” September 24, 2020, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/mostly-peaceful-lets-black-lives-matter-off-the-hook-for-real-violence (accessed December 22, 2021).
12 For more on the rhetoric of “a few bad apples,” see ABC News, “Origin of ‘A Few Bad Apples’ Tells a Different Story than the One Today,” June 15, 2020, https://abcnews.go.com/US/bad-apples-phrase-describing-rotten-police-officers-meaning/story?id=71201096 (accessed December 22, 2021).
13 “Crime of Violence Defined,” 18 U.S. Code § 16.
14 For a smart discussion in this vein, see Ian E.J. Hill, Advocating Weapons, War, and Terrorism: Technological and Rhetorical Paradox (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018).
15 See Heather A. Hayes, Violent Subjects and Rhetorical Cartography in the Age of the Terror Wars (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 7.
16 For more on the classical approach to this problem, see Megan Foley, “Of Violence and Rhetoric: An Ethical Aporia,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 99, no. 2 (2013): 191–9.
17 Michelle A. Holling, “Rhetorical Contours of Violent Frames and the Production of Discursive Violence,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 36, no. 3 (2019): 252.
18 Holling, “Rhetorical Contours of Violent Frames,” 252. See also Dreama G. Moon and Michelle A. Holling, “‘White Supremacy in Heels’: (White) Feminism, White Supremacy, and Discursive Violence,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 17, no. 2 (2020): 253–60.
19 Matthew Houdek, “Racial Sedimentation and the Common Sense of Racialized Violence: The Case of Black Church Burnings,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 104, no. 3 (2018): 279–306.
20 Bryan J. McCann, “On Whose Ground? Racialized Violence and the Prerogative of ‘Self-Defense’ in the Trayvon Martin Case,” Western Journal of Communication 78, no. 4 (2014): 480–99.
21 Sara L. McKinnon, Gendered Asylum: Race and Violence in U.S. Law and Politics (Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2016).
22 Sonya K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin, “Beyond Persuasion: A Proposal for Invitational Rhetoric,” Communication Monographs 62, no. 1 (1995): 4–5.
23 Foss and Griffin, “Beyond Persuasion,” 16, 10.
24 Jeremy Engels, “The Rhetoric of Violence: Sarah Palin’s Response to the Tucson Shooting,” Symplokê 20, no. 1–2 (2012): 135.
25 Engels, The Politics of Resentment, 142.
26 Engels, “The Rhetoric of Violence,” 135.
27 Ibid., 123.
28 Ibid., 135.
29 Jennifer R. Mercieca, “Dangerous Demagogues and Weaponized Communication,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 49, no. 3 (2019): 270.
30 Mercieca, “Dangerous Demagogues,” 274.
31 Kevin Michael DeLuca and Jennifer Peeples, “From Public Sphere to Public Screen: Democracy, Activism, and the ‘Violence’ of Seattle,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 19, no. 2 (2002): 137–9.
32 See, for comparison, Dana L. Cloud, “The Materiality of Discourse as Oxymoron: A Challenge to Critical Rhetoric,” Western Journal of Communication 58, no. 2 (1994): 141–63.
33 Teresa De Lauretis, “The Violence of Rhetoric: Considerations on Representation and Gender,” Semiotica 54, no. 1–2 (1985): 12.
34 Mary E. Stuckey and Sean Patrick O’Rourke, “Civility, Democracy, and National Politics,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 17, no. 4 (2014): 718.
35 Karma R. Chávez, “Community Debates: A Pedagogical, Queer, Intersectional Feminist Experiment,” Feminist Formations 30, no. 3 (2018): 109. See also Stacey K. Sowards, “Constant Civility as Corrosion of the Soul: Surviving Through and Beyond the Politics of Politeness,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 17, no. 4 (2020): 395–400.
36 See also Kristiana L. Báez and Ersula Ore, “The Moral Imperative of Race for Rhetorical Studies: On Civility and Walking-in-White in Academe,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 15, no. 4 (2018): 331–36; Andrew Calabrese, “Liberalism’s Disease: Civility Above Justice,” European Journal of Communication 30, no. 5 (2015): 539–53.
37 Nina M. Lozano-Reich and Dana Cloud, “The Uncivil Tongue: Invitational Rhetoric and the Problem of Inequality,” Western Journal of Communication 73, no. 2 (2009): 224.
38 Lozano-Reich and Cloud, “The Uncivil Tongue,” 223.
39 Also see Engels, The Politics of Resentment, 117.
40 See Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France, 1977–78, trans. Graham Burchell (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 87–114.
41 Toby Miller, The Well-Tempered Self: Citizenship, Culture, and the Postmodern Subject (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), xiii.
42 Étienne Balibar, Violence and Civility: On the Limits of Political Philosophy, trans. G.M. Goshgarian (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2015), 23.
43 Balibar, Violence and Civility, 23.
44 Leonard Lawlor, This is Not Sufficient: An Essay on Animality and Human Nature in Derrida (New York, NY: Columbia University Press), 146.
45 Max Weber, “Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions,” in Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, eds. Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 334.
46 Ian Hunter, “Personality as a Vocation: The Political Rationality of the Humanities,” in Foucault’s New Domains, eds. Mike Gane and Terry Johnson (London: Routledge, 1993), 168.
47 Craig Rood, “Rhetorics of Civility: Theory, Pedagogy, and Practice in Speaking and Writing Textbooks,” Rhetoric Review 32, no. 3 (2013): 331–48.
48 Celeste Michelle Condit, “Crafting Virtue: The Rhetorical Construction of Public Morality,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 73, no. 1 (1987): 79–97.
49 Dana Harrington, “Developing Democratic Dispositions: Eighteenth-Century Public Debating Societies and the Generative Capacity of Decorum,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 45, no. 4 (2015): 324–45. Also see Mark Garrett Longaker, Rhetorical Style and Bourgeois Virtue: Capitalism and Civil Society in the British Enlightenment (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015).
50 Greene, “Rhetorical Materialism,” 44.
51 Ibid., 54.
52 Ronald Walter Greene and Darrin Hicks, “Lost Convictions: Debating Both Sides and the Ethical Self-Fashioning of Liberal Citizens,” Cultural Studies 19, no. 1 (2005): 101. For a different take that emphasizes the moderating influence of switch-side debate (while emphasizing “the classical liberalism which underpins it”), see Eric English et al., “Debate as a Weapon of Mass Destruction,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 4, no. 2 (2007): 224.
53 See Melissa Maxcy Wade, “Replacing Weapons with Words,” The Atlanta Constitution, September 14, 1998.
54 Dahleen Glanton, “Urban Children Learn to Fight with Words,” Los Angeles Times, December 11, 2005, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-dec-11-adna-debate11-story.html (accessed December 22, 2021). See also Carol Winkler, “To Argue or to Fight: Improving At-Risk Students’ School Conduct through Urban Debate,” Controversia 7, no. 2 (2011): 76–91.
55 Shanara Rose Reid-Brinkley, “Ghetto Kids Gone Good: Race, Representation, and Authority in the Scripting of Inner-City Youths in the Urban Debate League,” Argumentation and Advocacy 49, no. 3 (2012): 77–99.
56 Davi Johnson, “Psychiatric Power: The Post-Museum as a Site of Rhetorical Alignment,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 5, no. 4 (2008): 344–62.
57 Shayne Pepper, “Subscribing to Governmental Rationality: HBO and the AIDS Epidemic,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 11, no. 2 (2014): 120–38.
58 Carlos Garcia, “Left-Wing Agitators Disrupt Ted Cruz Dining with His Wife, and Proudly Post Video,” September 24, 2018, https://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/09/24/left-wing-agitators-disrupt-ted-cruz-dining-with-his-wife-and-proudly-post-video (accessed December 22, 2021).
59 Corinne Weaver, “Antifa Group ‘Smash Racism’ Still Allowed on Facebook, Instagram,” November 13, 2018, https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/techwatch/corinne-weaver/2018/11/13/antifa-group-smash-racism-still-allowed-facebook-instagram (accessed December 22, 2021).
60 Weaver, “Antifa Group.”
61 Jana J. Pruet, “Facebook, Twitter Won’t Ban Leftists Who Posted Video of Ted Cruz and Wife Being Harassed at Dinner,” October 2, 2018, https://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/10/02/facebook-twitter-wont-ban-leftists-who-posted-video-of-ted-cruz-and-wife-being-harassed-at-dinner (accessed December 22, 2021).
62 Ellie Bufkin, “Invading Restaurants to Harass Political Opponents is Illegal and Harms Innocent Bystanders,” September 26, 2018, https://thefederalist.com/2018/09/26/invading-restaurants-harass-political-opponents-illegal-harms-innocent-bystanders/ (accessed December 22, 2021).
63 Bufkin, “Invading Restaurants.”
64 Greg Evans, “Twitter Suspends Account of Group that Protested Outside Tucker Carlson Home,” November 8, 2018, https://deadline.com/2018/11/tucker-carlson-smash-racism-d-c-protest-twitter-1202498275/ (accessed December 22, 2021).
65 Naturally, many critical communication and rhetoric scholars have expressed concern over Trump’s un-civil rhetoric, particularly how it relates to violence. For just a few examples, see Bonnie J. Dow, “Taking Trump Seriously: Persona and Presidential Politics in 2016,” Women’s Studies in Communication 40, no. 2 (207): 136–39; Brian L. Ott, “The Age of Twitter: Donald J. Trump and the Politics of Debasement,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 34, no. 1 (2017): 59–68; and C.V. Vitolo-Haddad, “The Blood of Patriots: Symbolic Violence and ‘The West’,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 49, no. 3 (2019): 280–96. Perhaps the most interesting and provocative analysis, with regard to the relationship between Trump’s rhetoric and political violence, appears in Casey Ryan Kelly, “Donald J. Trump and the Rhetoric of Ressentiment,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 106, no 1. (2019).
66 Benjamin Fearnow, “Maxine Waters: ‘No Peace, No Sleep’ for Trump Cabinet Members, Applauds Public Shaming,” June 24, 2018, https://www.newsweek.com/maxine-waters-trump-harass-kirstjen-nielsen-stephen-miller-sarah-huckabee-993173 (accessed December 22, 2021).
67 Jim Geraghty, “Representative Maxine Waters Calls for Political Violence,” June 25, 2018, https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/maxine-waters-political-violence/ (accessed December 22, 2021).
68 Adam Shaw, “Watchdog says Maxine Waters Inciting ‘Mob Violence,’ Presses Ethics Complaint,” July 5, 2018, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/watchdog-says-maxine-waters-inciting-mob-violence-presses-ethics-complaint (accessed December 22, 2021).
69 Sally Persons, “Pelosi Calls for Civility after Maxine Waters Encourages Supporters to Heckle Trump Officials,” Washington Times, June 25, 2018. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jun/25/nancy-pelosi-calls-civility-after-maxine-waters-en/ (accessed December 22, 2021).
70 Tim Hains, “Axelrod to Democrats: Don’t Follow Trump to the Bottom,” RealClear Politics, June 26, 2018, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/06/26/axelrod_to_democrats_dont_follow_trump_to_the_bottom.html (accessed December 22, 2021).
71 Josh Dawsey, “Trump Escalates Rhetoric on Unrest in Cities Looking for a Campaign Advantage,” August 28, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-escalates-rhetoric-on-unrest-in-cities-looking-for-a-campaign-advantage/2020/08/28/c42beee4-e984-11ea-a414-8422fa3e4116_story.html (accessed December 22, 2021).
72 C-SPAN, “Sen. Schumer: ‘No One Should Call for the Harassment of Political Opponents’ (C-SPAN),” June 25, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR8FpASqa-g (accessed December 22, 2021).
73 Lozano-Reich and Cloud, “The Uncivil Tongue,” 223.
74 Ibid., 224.
75 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” in Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 123.
76 See Roger Stahl, “Weaponizing Speech,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 102, no. 4 (2016): 377–78.
77 Peter Sloterdijk, “Rules for the Human Zoo: A Response to the Letter on Humanism,” trans. Mary Varney Rorty, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 27 (2009): 12–28.
78 Josh Halliday, “Twitter’s Tony Wang: ‘We Are the Free Speech Wing of the Free Speech Party,” The Guardian, March 2, 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/mar/22/twitter-tony-wang-free-speech (accessed December 22, 2021).
79 “The Twitter Rules,” https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules (accessed May 6, 2020).
80 Facebook, “An Update to How We Address Movements and Organizations Tied to Violence,” https://about.fb.com/news/2020/08/addressing-movements-and-organizations-tied-to-violence/ (accessed December 22, 2021).
81 Natasha Lennard, “Facebook’s Ban on Far-Left Pages is an Extension of Trump’s Propaganda,” August 20, 2020, https://theintercept.com/2020/08/20/facebook-bans-antifascist-pages/ (accessed December 22, 2021).
82 See Jodi Dean, Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009); Glencora Borradaile and Joshua Reeves, “Sousveillance Capitalism,” Surveillance & Society 18, no. 2 (2020): 272–75.
83 See Mark Andrejevic, “Surveillance in the Digital Enclosure,” The Communication Review 10 (2007): 295–317. See also Damien Smith Pfister, “Technoliberal Rhetoric, Civic Attention, and Common Sensation in Sergey Brin’s ‘Why Google Glass?’,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 105, no. 2 (2019): 182–203.
84 Jack Z. Bratich, “Civil Society Must Be Defended: Misinformation, Moral Panics, and Wars of Restoration,” Communication, Culture, and Critique 13, no. 3 (2020): 316.
85 Stahl, “Weaponizing Speech,” 390. Also see Ian E.J. Hill’s discussion of these unintended consequences in “Rhetorica’s Sword,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 52, no. 3 (2019): 318.
86 See Jeremy Packer and Joshua Reeves, Killer Apps: War, Media, Machine (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020), 21.