Rhetorical studies and national identity construction

Abstract

A review of the scholarship appearing in National Identities over its first 10 years reveals that increased theoretical and methodological dialogue between US and other international scholars of collective identity construction is in order. In that spirit, this essay discusses areas in which increased dialogue would likely prove fruitful: scholarship on public memory and memorialisation, presidential discourse, religious rhetoric and narrative theory.

Keywords:

• national identity
• rhetorical studies
• public memory
• narrative theory
• rhetoric of religion
• presidential rhetoric

Notes

1. A thorough introduction to the history of rhetorical theory is provided by Bizzell and Herzberg's The Rhetorical Tradition (2000), although it hardly touches upon the veritable explosion of rhetorical theory over the last 30 years. For introductions to contemporary rhetorical theory, see the journals the Quarterly Journal of Speech and Rhetoric and Public Affairs.

2. For more on Aristotle's epistemological theory, see The Nichomachean Ethics (1976, pp. 203–225).

3. There are important distinctions to be made, for example, between the basic consciousness of sentient beings, the self-consciousness of higher mammals, and meta-self-consciousness (i.e. awareness of the arbitrary nature of one's symbolic world, and thus the capacity to critically reflect upon the dangers of its otherwise taken-for-granted assumptions). For discussions of such distinctions and their political ramifications, see Barthes (1972, pp. 109–159) and Sandoval (2000). Jingoistic patriots remain trapped at the second level.

4. For a helpful introduction to various conceptualizations of the rhetorical enterprise, see Ceccarelli (1998).

5. Aristotle (2007, p. 4).

6. A classic methodological text outlining neo-Aristotelian speech criticism is Thonssen and Baird (1948). It provides scores of analytical categories under each criterion.

7. For an important critique of the neo-Aristotelian approach to public address scholarship, see Black (1978). For an influential characterization of rhetorical situations, see Bitzer (1968). A rhetorical situation, according to Bitzer, is one in which an exigence can be ameliorated through the artful application of rhetoric.

8. In the early 1900s speech studies in the US emerged, perhaps oddly enough, out of English departments, and the initial impetus was the thought that speeches should be critiqued as a type of literature. This attitude prevailed well into the twentieth century, but it was productively challenged during the turbulent 1960s. A later, but important, example of such challenges can be found in McGee (1990).

9. Essays indicating this turn from intentionalist to post-intentionalist rhetorical criticism include Wander (1983) and McKerrow (1989). For two of innumerable perspectives on how language speaks us, see Barthes (1977, pp. 142–148) and Bourdieu (1991).

10. For an early essay dealing with the perceived tensions between historiography and rhetorical criticism, see Lucas (1981).

11. Two texts widely drawn upon to introduce students to rhetorical criticism are Burgchardt (2005) and Foss (2008).

12. In addition to the ‘usual suspects’ in national identity theory, such as Benedict Anderson, Craig Calhoun, Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm, Elie Kedourie, Terrence Ranger and Anthony Smith, the debates in public sphere theory, among people as diverse as Jürgen Habermas, Ernesto Laclau, Slavoj Žižek and Michael Warner, have everything to do with collective identity construction, I would argue, and the theoretical perspectives of each provides methodological guidance for studying nationalism. In addition, rhetorical theorists have provided explicit theories and methods for analysing the construction of ‘peoples’. See, for example, McGee (1975) and Charland (1987).

13. On the larger schism between dominant conceptualizations of rhetoric in Europe and the US, see Bruner (2006).

14. See, for example, Ong (2004).

15. See, for example, Karner (2005), Hernández (2008) and Bauder (2009).

16. In addition to the essays summarized here, and not to repeat myself, I should like to refer readers to my contributions on this topic appearing in National Identities. See Bruner (2000) and Bruner (2005).

17. The monuments at Kent State University, where the National Guard shot unarmed students protesting against the Vietnam War, provide another excellent example of ongoing discursive negotiations over memorials.

18. Other early essays dealing with the Vietnam Memorial from a rhetoric point of view include Ehrenhaus (1988) and Carlson and Hocking (1988). From there, rhetoric scholars expanded their work to other memorials. See, as representative examples, Katriel (1994), Gallagher (1995), Biesecker (2002) and Phillips (2004). For a more recent account of the struggle over memorials and public memory in a European context, see Cionea (2007).

19. Also see Browne (1995).

20. Biesecker (2006). Representative of work expanding national identity studies to new types of texts include Hasian and Frank (1999, pp. 95–114), Hasian (2001) and Shahaf (2010).

21. Bruner (2002), Beasley (2003) and Stuckey (2004).

22. The importance of us/them relations in political phenomena in general was articulated most forcefully by the Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt (1996). Sadly, most forms of national identity conform to Schmitt's frightening and appalling appraisal.

23. For a small sample of the wide range of work being done on rhetoric and religion, see the website created for the Rhetoric Society of America conference (RSA, 2007).

24. Leff and Mohrmann (1974), Leff (1992).

25. On critical historiography in general, see Foucault (1984), Nietzsche (1980).