Unclenching the Fist: Embodying Rhetoric and Giving Objects Their Due

Abstract

The vandalizing of Monument to Joe Louis initiated efforts in the media to explain both the meaning of the vandalism and of the monument itself. This article engages those efforts to find an explanation linking act to object. Proceeding through the joining of acts, objects, and words, this article works toward a non-reductive account of the embodiment of rhetoric.

Notes

¹On the notion of racialization of rhetoric through privileged distance, see “Detroit and the Closed Fist.”

²Because I am less concerned with the monument as object in and of itself and more concerned with the interactions of the vandals with the monument and the rhetorical issues raised for me by their actions, I draw only as needed on the literature in the rhetorical studies of monuments. For a full review of this line of research see Blair, “Reflections on Criticism and Bodies: Parables from Public Places.”

³On the interconnections of race and violence and rhetoric in this particular case, see “Police Violence and Denials of Rhetoric.”

⁴I am not intending to oppose coercion to persuasion in any way. Understanding persuasion, or rhetoric, as embodied, as an immediately lived experience, blurs the line separating it from some other of brute physical force. Instead, persuasion and coercion seep into and around each other.

⁵Which is not to say that an artist could never imagine vandalism as a response. In fact some artists have built the invitation to vandalize their art into the work itself. In addition developments in media have allowed a greater interactivity with art objects than captured by Graham. See Hansen. Also Mitchell.

⁶Bevan argues that the appearance and perceived power of any given meaning in a monument or building is a function of commonly shared or collective memories that emerge “where individual memories interact within a framework provided by societal memory” (16).

⁷Latour's term, “making do,” recalls Herbert Simon's influential term, “satisficing.” If “making do” is really nothing more than “satisficing,” then the concept of “making do” is subject to the same criticisms as have been leveled against satisficing. I do not consider this possibility here. On the concept of “satisficing,” see Simon. For a good discussion of the problems with satisficing, see Forester.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Richard Marback

Richard Marback is Professor in the Department of English at Wayne State University