Reality -- what a concept.

[cj]

Andy Crockett commented:

> Rhetoricians (and I would include myself among them at
>times) seem to view things situationally, constructively, without
>recourse to foundations or bedrock reality (unless socially
>constructed).  In a chat it's easy to pull the rug out from someone
>else's claim to Truth by exposing the assumptions and power agendas, but
>I doubt that most of us live there.  I guess the question is, what is
>the relationship between rhetoric and materiality, rhetoric and 'real'
>conditions?  (Talk about a small question...)

What I think you're talking about is Stasis and Kairos. Even if we start with
the classical Greek tradition -- the pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle -- we see
a serious and complex rift between those grounded in philosophical Truths, and
those willing to operate from a relativistic (some might argue even
solipsistic) view of stasis (rhetorical situation) and kairos (the
impulse/appropriateness of the moment).

Though I am most comfortable leaving questions of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty
to the philosophers and theologians, as a Rhetorician I find a great deal to
talk about in two seminal articles:

Bitzer, Lloyd F. “The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy & Rhetoric 1:1 (1968):
1-14.
Vatz, Richard. “The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy & Rhetoric
6:3, 154-161. 
Bitzer lays out the elements by means of which the writer/orator *discovers*
the situation, and then uses language to clearly make descriptions, judgments
and arguments about it. Vatz argues that writers *create* situation by means of
selection and semantics.

Although Bitzer is very seductive in his application of Occam's razor to the
issues of rhetorical situation and our impulse to alter perceptions through
utterances, in the end Richard Vatz is powerfully persuasive with his lucid
commentary (call it "post-modern" if that bakes your academic cookies) on the
ability of lantuage to alter our perceptions of "reality."

Hayden White's _Tropics of Discourse_ nails the coffin shut on "universal
truths" and any kind of notions that all readers / observers function in the
same reality.

As I've always said:

"Perhaps solipsism only works as a point of view until you step in front of a
bus. However, the bus does not squash me because I believe it exists. Oh no.
The bus squishes me because it believes that *I* exist."

With smiles and a refusal to take any of this *too* seriously,

CJ Jeney



_____________________________
CJ Jeney
Arizona State University

http://www.public.asu.edu/~starbuck/
azcacti at asu.edu
_____________________________
Mork: "Fly, little egg! You're free!"
Egg:   *splatt*