Won't Somebody Please Think of the Children? (No, Seriously)

The other day Casey posted an interesting article on the globalization of American psychological disorders; to which I responded my interest in how contagion can be discursive: "if you word it, it will come?" I was reacting specifically to a story on the rise of anorexia in China: after a particularly public episode, during which news coverage began integrating American terminology for anorexia, China saw a significant spike in documented cases.

Today, I read on Slash.dot of the rise in Youth depression and hypomania. One of the study's principal researchers, Jean Twenge, is the author of The Narcissism Expidemic. A student used portions of this book last semester in a paper critiquing social media websites such as Facebook and MySpace as nothing more than broadcast machinary for the 21st century's increasingly self-absorbed subject. I, expectedly, poo-poo'd the idea since I see these media collectives as more about "us" than "me" (and I say "more"--this is certainly a "both-and" rather than "either-or" effect. But now, especially with the discursive nature of affliction on my mind (and a 2 and 1/2 year old daughter at home), I do worry a bit more about the ideological-cultural world my kid [self-absorbed narcissism alert] will inhabit.

In the article, an undergraduate offers the following response to the study:

The unrealistic feelings that are ingrained in us from a young age - that we need to have massive amounts of money to be considered a success - not only lead us to a higher likelihood of feeling inadequate, anxious or depressed, but also make us think that the only value in getting an education is to make a lot of money, which is the wrong way to look at it.

On a theoretical level, I think of Lacan's notion of symbolic order as an psycho-social membrane--that which articulates subjectivity--is always plagued by the Real that it must include but cannot incorporate. Reflecting here--there is a sharp division between cultural expectation [narrative] and economic reality [scene], and one cannot help but think that a few characters are getting squished in the middle. On institutional and pedagogical levels, I feel particularly close to the student's final line--that "we" [that's "us" people--you know who you are] have to do a better job at re-articulating and promoting [rhetoric] the function of a university. My own research agenda involves doing this historically--to compare contemporary justifications for the University [whether official: i.e., the Modern emphasis on research or unofficial, i.e., the student/societal emphasis on employment] to classical notions. I am currently working on a project with a graduate student that aligns Cicero with early American pragmatists to generate a vision for the University that returns it to its pre-Italian humanist roots (humanist as in "studies how human beings do things" rather than humanism as in "studies THE human being's condition").

Off to the library. The RESEARCH library.

Reading Cicero Otherwise

So I am more and more coming to the realization that I will likely have to learn at least Latin, if not Greek, in the coming years. My Latin is tolerable enough to work through small passages, but I admit to being reliant on translations. Reading Cicero in preparation for my graduate seminar this week, I was struck by what I believe to be a telling anachronism in a passage from J. S. Watson's 1970 translation:

For the proper concern of an orator, as I have already said, is language of power and elegance accommodated to the feelings and understandings of mankind. (20)

It was that last word that really struck me--mankind, since, to my knowledge, the Greeks did not have such a conception (this, I realize is a difficult statement--certainly, Plato and Isocrates, via Idealism and Hellenism, approach the concept, but I don't want to engage that fight here). Now I realize that Cicero is a Roman--but the opening section of his De Oratore is a pragmatic response to Plato's treatment of rhetoric. Essentially, Cicero argues that Plato, sitting in his corner (an allusion to Aristophanes' The Clouds), discusses important matters in dead, lifeless, bloodness, dry, academic language. The power of the orator comes in injecting life into this language--imbuing it with an animating passion.

It was this celebration of language that got my spider sense tingling--because, beyond the direct Enlightenment language of "mankind," I also hear an 18th century preference for understanding over passion. Readers of Addison and Samuel Johnson will be familiar with such an echo. To confirm my suspicion, I checked a few other [free, electronic] translations of the passage. First, from the 1904 E. N. P. Moor translation:

For the special province of the orator is, as I have said already more than once, to express himself in a style at once impressive and artistic and comfortable with the thoughts and feelings of human nature.

I hear in this one a remnant of Ramus--a reduction of oratory from style (I can't get into it here--but Cicero is suspicious of the term rhetoric, linking it to books, and prefers the term oratory, stressing the performative elements. Style has a default logography to it. Hmm.

From the 1822 Guthrie translation:

For, as I have often said, the province of an orator is to talk in a language that is proper, graceful, and suited to the affections and understandings of mankind.

"Proper" and "graceful" here are powerful Enlightenment concepts--connected to the Order of the Beautiful. A bit of interpretive induction suggests that the orators' power isn't suitable to the occassion, but rather to the Truth of Mankind. Again, I am reading beyond the lines, but I believe such a reading is productive.

Now, like I said, my Latin is rusty and was never close to fluent. But here's the original Latin:

hoc enim est proprium oratoris, quod saepe iam dixi, oratio gravis et ornata et hominum sensibus ac mentibus accommodata.

Rather than transform "hominum sensibus" as some form of "understanding of mankind"--which seems to [theoretically] universalist and [philologically] sloppy--I chose to go with a more literal representation of the words: one that captures sensibus as feeling/perception in connection with the senses. Additionally, let accommodata ring with its sense of "suitability" or "propriety." So, my amateur interpretation would look something like this:

For the particular being of oratory is, as said, weighty/pregnant speech furnished by a perceiving mind and adaptable disposition/soul.

While the use of soul might seem odd here, remember that this is Cicero's most direct response to Platonic censure. It is quite likely that he might want to tease out soul here--a way of exorcising Platonic spirits and celebrating rhetorical souls. Pregnant is a possible meaning for gravis--and I personally like it here, since it reminds us that the purpose of speech isn't transference, but growth. The notion of a[hu]mankind is proper to a transcendental, idealist, dualism which Cicero here, and in other places, resists. For Cicero, the orator is responsible, first and foremost, to the people surrounding her.

In historical rhetorical studies, theorists such as Poulakos and Vitanza often get accused of reading ancient texts with a postmodern bias (which they, and I, do). I wonder, however, if closer study of all translations wouldn't reveal the extent to which the texts we teach in graduate classes aren't, in ways that often escapes our attention, written from an extreme default modernity. There's a Levinasian slant to my reading--one drenched in a postmodern feminine [pregnant] ethic of responsibility, accountability, singularity, and transience. I think we can see in Cicero a celebration of the saying's power, a dedication to enacting change in the polis, and a skepticism of knowledge for knowledge's sake.

NOTE: I am working from a coffee shop today. I have found 4 other translations available at the USF library, so I will check those tomorrow.

Jack McCoy, Ciceronian Rhetoric, and the art of Pathetic Conclusions

Tomorrow I'm planning a quick, introductory lecture on Ciceronian argument. As such, I'll be referring to the six-part structure extracted from the Catiline Orations and discussed at length in De Inventione. In brief:

• Exordium [prepares the hearer... this can be creative, it depends on kairos; thinking of They Say, I Say, this is where you make the case for "who cares?" or "why care?"]
• Narration ["the facts of the case," here is an objective overview, or a statement of a problem]
• Partition [here is where the speaker lays out exactly what they will be arguing; defining the scope of there work. What they hope to accomplish]
• Confirmation [the presentation of evidence]
• Refutation [respond to possible objections]
• Peroration [sums up the argument, usually incites pathos of some kind]

In putting this lecture together, I hoped to find an example of one of Jack McCoy's closing arguments from Law and Order, by far my favorite television show. Nathaniel River, Ryan Weber and I have talked about doing an article comparing Law and Order and CSI in light of Sophist (non-Aristoletian) rhetoric vs. Platonic philosophy. In CSI, cases are always solved "beyond a shadow of a doubt." The show is full of cliches testifying that "the evidence doesn't lie" or "there is always a clue." There's even a few episodes in which Grissom staunchly denies that "human observation" (i.e., eyewitnesses) shouldn't be considered as evidence at all. In the end, a CSI episode wraps up nice and neat (even if there is at times some question as to whether the crime was justified). As a rhetorician, I prefer the "mess" of Law and Order: at the end of every episode, regardless of the legal decision, there is always residual moral ambiguity. In Law and Order, stasis is never as absolute as it is in CSI. In CSI, a dead body always signifies a crime to be solved. In Law and Order, a dead body signifies a social problem. Whether there was even a crime is often a matter of the morality of the jury (and viewer).

Anywho, in searching for a video clip, I came across a PDF article "The Art of Closing" on the impact of Law and Order on juridical practice. While I had heard of the CSI effect (the idea that the show has made jury's expect rigorous scientific evidence for every conviction), I had not heard of a Law and Order effect. Essentially the author, attorney David A. Gradwhol, argues that the performative and emotive dimensions of McCoy's closings are having a noticeable impact on jury expectations. I think his conclusions make sound advice for any rhetorician:

• While attorneys might not be able to reduce their closings to the five-minute (or less) Law and Order versions, they should push for focused brevity: "a focused closing has the power to etch the merits of the client's position onto the jurors' minds."
• Avoid jargon: "lawyers should not confuse the jury with obscure legal terms... The lawyers' verbal arsenal should include analogies and key words that elicit strong mental and emotional images for the jury."
• While actual closings might not be able to offer moral soliliquies, they can strive "to keep the moral high ground... as they may present issues of moral concern about honoring contracts or providing an injured person with the compensation he or she deserves"

When teaching "academic writing," I have always struggled to find a helpful way to present conclusions. But I think these two final points offer a possibility of conceptualizing the conclusion as an emphasis on "why care?" Sure, the conclusion needs to remind us of the logos for the argument, but it should wrap this logos in pathos. The conclusion elicits cooperation by arousing passion. Truth can never be divorced from desire--and a strong conclusion needs to remind the audience why they should care to endorse a particular truth.