Apology as Metanoic Performance: Punitive Rhetoric and Public Speech

Abstract

Scholars across the disciplines find much dysfunction in public apologies because they assume that these statements pursue the reconciliatory end of forgiveness. In contrast, this essay argues that public apologies do not enable forgiveness, but rather operate as ritualistic public punishment and humiliation in order to enforce certain ethical standards for public speech. These punishments are achieved by coercing offenders to offer apologies that embody metanoia, a rhetorical and religious concept that denotes a sudden change of heart or personal conversion. Through a rhetorical analysis of the performance of metanoia in public apologies from Don Imus, Michael Richards, and Mel Gibson, this essay demonstrates the punitive function of apologetic discourse and examines its ethical implications.

Acknowledgments

The author extends his gratitude to his colleagues at the University of Houston—Downtown, particularly William Waters, Johanna Schmertz, Chuck Jackson, Diana Bowen, and Mike Duncan. Thanks also to the editorial staff at Rhetoric Society Quarterly.

Notes

¹The masculine pronoun is used to describe the general public apologist/offender throughout this essay. This choice reflects the reality that the vast majority of people who are subjected to punitive apologetic spectacles are men. However, the reason that women are excluded from this social ritual is a worthy topic of inquiry.

²There were many who doubted the authenticity of his conversion. After the metanoia, Reverend Al Sharpton was among those rejecting the possibility of Richards's kairotic transformation: “I told Richards you need to sit down and deal with this. This is not about accepting an apology. This is about starting a process to really deal with the continual problem of racism in this country. I think that what he did was so injurious that he needs to sit down with a group and decide how he tries to … dealing with the obvious problem that he's got in his own mind and his own heart, because it wouldn't come out of you if it wasn't in you” (qtd. in “Sharpton: Comedian's Apology Not Enough”).

³The quasi-religious character of the metanoia in all public apologies is underscored by the fact that in all three cases the “sufficient” spiritual apology is judged by some religious figure: Jackson for Richards, Foxman for Gibson, and Sharpton for Imus.

⁴In their work on racial apologies, Dexter B. Gordon and Carrie Crenshaw show how many such apologies actually perpetuate ideologies of white privilege and complicate the work of antiracism. Close attention to the calls for such apologies indicates the same thing: although they evidence a will to deter hate speech, in practice they may foster more resentment on the part of those prone to such speech.