Topoi and INvention
Published on Nov 18, 2015
No Description
MORE DECKS TO EXPLORE
PRESENTATION OUTLINE
Topoi and INvention
Examining the Rhetorical Histories of Comparison
Untitled Slide
The power of association to identify relationality, clarify ideas, and ultimately construct a useful knowledge base for the practice of rhetoric and communication is clear throughout the histories of rhetoric. But in a world where fixed foundations do not always work in the contact zones , this form of comparative inquiry must be counter-balanced with more dissociative uses that will ultimately lead to deeper contextualization and reflection of our situated perspectives. In other words, reintroducing dissociation into the comparative process can help rearticulate the discourses that have been reified throughout the discursive histories of our field. comparison must be seen as a performance influenced by powerful historical, institutional, and systematic sedimentations, requiring methods of reflection that go beyond simply the deliberate juxtaposition, collation, or differentiation of social things.
-binary hierarchical terms
-binary hierarchical terms
In classical rhetoric, comparison has the power to both create and undo knowledge through association and dissociation.
But as associationist epistemologies of the 18th century redefined rhetoric and comparison, the relational power of the topoi becomes more about arrangement.
Discovery
In this context, comparison was an act of invention—a way of discovering the different means of persuasion, particularly in moments when orators had to develop an impromptu line of reasoning. The progymnasmata, a group of ancient Greek rhetorical exercises, often asked students to immitate or practice these genres, for example syncrisis was an exercise whereby students practiced comparing greater things to weaker things (Kennedy, Progymnasmat … 114). The end goal, though, was to prepare students to generate discourse or argument, rather than merely imitate the arguments of others.
Untitled Slide
Topoi, or places, become ways of testing different types of relations to see which fits the discussion or argument at hand, lending a degree of invention and discovery to comparison that does not necessarily manifest in the modes of discourse that eventually evolve out of these categories. Use of comparison within the topoi already assumes a degree of dissociation or chaos that must be ordered and presented to an audience persuasively to create a new understanding within a particular argumentative context. In order to identify the associative powers of comparison, one must look at how both Aristotle and Cicero, two main theoretical sources for topoi, make use of comparison outside its specific description as a topos.
Photo by Wiertz Sébastien
Aristotle and Comparison
- "desirable or objectionable"
- "subtract the excess of one thing over the other"
- “definitions [are] mostly concerned ...sameness and difference”
Arisotle
In other words, the purpose of comparison is to develop the most effective and expedient means of persuasion, which almost entirely depends on positing an essential or universal. Creating comparisons that function on hierarchized binaries is the inevitable outcome of this form of inquiry and arguably the most useful when attempting to persuade a particular audience of a moral or political necessity. Aristotle’s rules for comparison not only assume that comparison takes place between stable objects or ideas, but valorizes the act of universalizing properties that appear unchangeable. Though there is certainly an inventive aspect to this methodology of comparison, it is limited by an agonistic approach to rhetoric that structures comparison in binaries, establishing a hierarchy between terms.
In other words, the purpose of comparison is to develop the most effective and expedient means of persuasion, which almost entirely depends on positing an essential or universal. Creating comparisons that function on hierarchized binaries is the inevitable outcome of this form of inquiry and arguably the most useful when attempting to persuade a particular audience of a moral or political necessity. Aristotle’s rules for comparison not only assume that comparison takes place between stable objects or ideas, but valorizes the act of universalizing properties that appear unchangeable. Though there is certainly an inventive aspect to this methodology of comparison, it is limited by an agonistic approach to rhetoric that structures comparison in binaries, establishing a hierarchy between terms.
Photo by marazmova
"when the inquiry is what the character of something is, the inquiry is conducted either simply, or by way of comparison"
This, then, is what the ancients prescribe: that when you have taken those things which are common to the thing which you wish to define with other things, you must pursue them till you make out of them altogether some peculiar property which cannot be transferred to anything else. (92)
Photo by Leo Reynolds
Untitled Slide
Aelius Theon
=motivated the same by greed
>How much more the gods
Comparison is not a way of discerning an essence, but of reshaping how something is seen.
There are actually two notions of comparison: (1) qualities of similarity and difference and (2) perceptions of relationality through association. The second expands our notion of comparison to include many different kinds of relationships, though often limited to finding the “essence” of a particular thing or idea.
Cicero, and even Aristotle to some degree, certainly allow for a more complex view of comparison by illustrating how the associative power of comparison is foundational to determining several different kinds of relations, not just the ones mentioned by Aristotle. Even so, comparison has often been restricted to the more truncated topical definition.
Comparison loses much of its agonistic edge, along with its inventive power, when classical rhetoric is combined with other epistemologies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the tendency to objectify hierarchized binaries remains the structuring basis for much of comparison in what are usually called the “modes of discourse.”
[10:00]
=motivated the same by greed
>How much more the gods
There are actually two notions of comparison: (1) qualities of similarity and difference and (2) perceptions of relationality through association. The second expands our notion of comparison to include many different kinds of relationships, though often limited to finding the “essence” of a particular thing or idea.
Cicero, and even Aristotle to some degree, certainly allow for a more complex view of comparison by illustrating how the associative power of comparison is foundational to determining several different kinds of relations, not just the ones mentioned by Aristotle. Even so, comparison has often been restricted to the more truncated topical definition.
Comparison loses much of its agonistic edge, along with its inventive power, when classical rhetoric is combined with other epistemologies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the tendency to objectify hierarchized binaries remains the structuring basis for much of comparison in what are usually called the “modes of discourse.”
[10:00]
Photo by maccath
Untitled Slide
The inventive aspect of comparison can arguably be seen as the central influence on the development of epistemology faculty in 18th century thought, particularly in the Scottish Enlightenment. The associative powers of the mind became the central defining aspect of humanity. As a universal, the "rational" or "logical" aspect of the mind was no longer associated with rhetoric, but with philosophy, metaphysics, and religion. The topoi become more than just a way of perceiving or discovering relations; they become conflated with logic, which, for Enlightenment thinkers, originates in the mind of a universal subjectivity that ultimately defines what it means to be human.
Photo by ajari
“...resemblance, contiguity in time or place, and cause and effect.”
David Hume is most often attributed with these early associationist conceptions of the mind through his study of how the mind puts ideas together, primarily through resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect (A Treatise of Human Nature loc. 189).
Photo by Stifts- och landsbiblioteket i Skara
REasoning Faculty
"bundled" by association
Hume primarily aims how the reasoning faculty works, which became the primary heuristic through which taste and morality were theorized by Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, amplifying the reliance on the universal and the essential by re-locating them in the mind of the “common man.” Even so, in Hume’s faculty epistemology, “resemblance” becomes the basis for comparative inquiry. without the stable and permanent laws of the human mind, the “bundle of perceptions” that make up our conscious experience will unravel into a chaotic, nonsensical dream world. Comparison is one such stable and permanent law, and dissociation or lack of relationality is ultimately interpreted as chaos and irrationality.
Photo by Jason Pier in DC
ARrangment
Management of Discourse
Campbell takes Hume’s three mental activities to develop a rhetoric based on the “assumption that the mind draws inferences and deductions through the logical dynamics of associative links” (Johnson 22). According to Nan Johnson, George Campbell ties the act of creating discourse to truth and “empirical veracity” or the management of discourse to most closely reflect correct logic or natural ways of thinking. To appeal to the “reasoning” faculty of the mind, one must rely on principles of induction that are both universal and unchanging.Whereas Aristotle’s conception of comparison relies to some degree on context to discover different means of persuasion, Campbell shifts the emphasis to “the identification and presentation of argumentative or explanatory evidence or materials” (Johnson 24). In other words, the proper relationships within an argument lie within the nature of the details and the mind— the context is irrelevant. Comparison becomes a form of arrangement that can appeal to specific logical principles that lie innately in every “intelligent” person’s mind. The more closely an argument matches these laws, the more persuasive it will be.
Photo by extraface
Untitled Slide
For Campbell, the associative nature of comparison goes deeper than mere similarities and differences, though it does not become a cornerstone of his rhetorical theory. In many ways, all manner of evidence, whether moral or scientific, comes “from the invariable properties or relations of general ideas (Cambell loc. 1406). But for Campbell and many of his contemporary thinkers, the nature of inquiry becomes more firmly ensconced by scientific discourse. Campbell primarily uses examples from science to explicate this process of inquiry, for example when a botanist encounters a new flower and must identify the relations between other known flowers. Though there are many different “component parts” to objects of comparison that can be combined in various ways, the goal is often to create a “species,” or identify broad connections between diverse objects. For Campbell, this is not only the one essential “criterion of all moral reasoning,” but also “the principal organ of truth” for all branches of knowledge, including science, philosophy, and theology (Campbell loc. 1808). Comparison, then, becomes an essentializing tool in the service of a single-ordered universe, creating an interpretative framework that divides communication into two parts, that which is universal and that which is arbitrary.
Photo by nosha
"The art of the logician is ... universal, the art of the grammarian is always particular, and local."
building a foundation for the comparison of other cultures:
"The rules of argumentation laid down by Aristotle, in his Analytics, are of as much use for the discovery of truth in Britain or in China, as they were in Greece ..."
Photo by Francisco Diez
Bain and Comparison
- "understanding" and "exposition"
- Effects on the mind
- “... is the chief inventive power of the mind.”
- " ... a constant avocation of the human mind.”
As composition transitioned from oratory to written word in the late nineteenth century, American compositionists began to reframe faculty epistemologies in pedagogical practices that would police the use of English. ,
[Slide]
Bain’s work takes faculty and associationist psychology to the furtherest extreme, first by dividing rhetoric according to three mental faculties: (1) Understanding, (2) Will, and (3) Feelings (Bain, English Composition and Rhetoric 19). Comparison falls under exposition, which corresponds to the “Understanding.”
[Slide]
Bain’s work takes faculty and associationist psychology to the furtherest extreme, first by dividing rhetoric according to three mental faculties: (1) Understanding, (2) Will, and (3) Feelings (Bain, English Composition and Rhetoric 19). Comparison falls under exposition, which corresponds to the “Understanding.”
“[Rhetoric] is an art, not a science: for it neither observes, nor discovers, nor classifies.”
Most of Bain’s discussion of comparison revolves around their figurative use and the effect they have on the audience’s mind, the implication being that heuristic use of comparison falls within the purview of science. Or in Adams Sherman Hill’s words, “[Rhetoric] is an art, not a science: for it neither observes, nor discovers, nor classifies” (Hill, The Priniciples of Rhetoric ... 5).
Modes of Discourse
- Narration
- Description
- Division
- Partition
- Compare/Contrast
Rhetoric then concerns itself with the discursive faculty of the mind, which can then be divided logically into modes, which can be further divided into processes. Comparison, then, is a method of arrangement that aids in the exposition of a single, unified idea, which presumes that other disciplines, like science and philosophy, have already created the knowledge being presented. In other words, the dissociative aspects of discourse have already been overcome by the associative power of reason within science and philosophy. The goal of the rhetor is merely to explicate that discourse in a way that is most accessible to the faculties of the "common mind."
Photo by Leo Reynolds
"If ... a subject is but dimly conceived, one mode of assisting the mind, is to bring forward something of the same kind that we already understand. Our knowledge of the familiar throws light upon the unfamiliar object."
Despite the limited discussion of comparison with regard to rhetoric and persuasion, Bain and others of his time clearly saw the associative power of comparison as a critical methodology that not only supported the modes of discourse, but was also integral to the scientific methodologies of their time. One must look deeper than simply topical or modal use of comparison.
[slide]
The assumption underlying comparative inquiry is that what is known is truly known, tending to universalize familiar perspectives, particularly when comparing with the unfamiliar. It is not possible to compare two unfamiliar objects without a familiar or known object. The construction of knowledge is a linear and teleological process which mostly requires clarifying, adapting, or adding to what is already known—the fixed foundation from which comparisons are cast.
[slide]
The assumption underlying comparative inquiry is that what is known is truly known, tending to universalize familiar perspectives, particularly when comparing with the unfamiliar. It is not possible to compare two unfamiliar objects without a familiar or known object. The construction of knowledge is a linear and teleological process which mostly requires clarifying, adapting, or adding to what is already known—the fixed foundation from which comparisons are cast.
Photo by Darkroom Daze
Comparison is deeply rhetorical, participating in how discourse circulates power, constructs identities, shapes institutions, and determines how we see and interpret the world.
Photo by tonynetone
Blair and Comparison
- Make "meaning clearly and fully understood"
- Explaining vs. Embellishing
- "make us advance useful knowledge"
- "to illustrate the object for the sake of which it is introduced."
Blair reifies comparativist epistemologies that build on hierarchical binaries between the familiar and unfamiliar. First of all, comparative work is often associated with objects or artifacts within a hierarchical relationship, where one object is necessarily the dominant or familiar one. Therefore, comparison necessarily requires objectification, lending itself to dichotomies and binaries, particularly around the familiar and unfamiliar or “polished” and “unpolished” forms of taste.
“For when a writer compares the object of which he treats with any other thing, it always is ... with a view either to make us understand that object more clearly, or to render it more pleasing and engaging."
With respect to knowledge, comparison’s main purpose is to make one or both objects clearer through ornamentation, or to clarify an abstract, universal principle. As with many elements of language and rhetoric, the inventional aspects of rhetoric are at best in the background, and at worst, not there at all.
