JudyHoliday

Internvention locating rhetorics ethos. Routledge Saylor and francis group

Rhetoric review vol. 28 no 4 pg 388-405, 2009

Ignorance is an intrinsically human condition; knowledge is always partial, partisan,
and socially constructed.1 Nevertheless, the beauty of this condition, whether we
call it ignorance or topical preference, resides in the fact that ignorance is a
precondition of invention (Poulakos). The aporia of ignorance provide the spaces
enabling invention, and invention enables us to expand our repertoires of what
there is to know and imagine, especially with respect to enlarging our perceptions of
what constitutes ethical knowledge. In contrast to this markedly sanguine view of
invention, the postmodern critique, which has highlighted the asymmetrical nature
of human relations (Young; Ratcliffe; Fraser; Ahmed), has brought attention to many
difficulties associated with being
IRnh[etetor]rvicenRtieovni:ewLocating Rhetorics Ethos
388
In[ter]vention: Locating Rhetoric s Ethos 389
ethical, which, Julia T. Woods succinctly explains, means being inclusive of a
range of voices and experiences and perspectives (qtd. in Arneson 118).2

In response to such difficulties, many contemporary rhetorical scholars have turned
their attention to ethos as a meaningful framework for talking about ethics. Calvin O.
Shrag writes that ethos antedates its offsprings ethics and morality and is older
than ethical imperatives and tables of virtue defining moral charac- ter (vii). The
reinvigoration of classical understandings of the social nature of ethos troubles
modernist notions of intrinsic and consistent character. Karen Burke LeFevre notes
that because ethos arises from the relationship between the individual and the
community, it cannot exist in isolation (45). Rhetorical scholars have
reinvigorated the concept of ethos as a habitual gathering place (LeFevre;
Halloran; Reynolds) and as a dwelling place (Schrag; Hyde) to help reestablish
ethos as a social act (Reynolds 327). Positing ethos as a social act, S. Michael
Halloran reminds us that classical notions of ethos emphasize the conventional
rather than the idiosyncratic, the public rather than the private and the virtues
most valued by the culture to and for which one speaks (60). Prob- lematically,
however, cultural stratification and inequity underwrite the majority of human
interaction and are aspects of the human condition (historically and syn-
chronically) that foreclose simple delineation of not only virtue, but also, as Nancy
Fraser would argue, that which constitutes the public domain.
Scholarship has certainly moved discussion about ethics forward, as evi- denced in
Michael Hydes The Ethos of Rhetoric, a 2004 collection of essays by a dozen well-
known rhetorical scholars about ethos as a foundational principle of rhetoricthe
notion that location underwrites all rhetorical situations, shaping and
circumscribing knowledge, perception, and invention; in other words, all rhetors
and all rhetorical activity are located. Incorporation of the social nature of ethos
moves beyond simplistic or modernist definitions of ethos as individual
characterwhere character might denote a rhetors reputation, a rhetors
intrinsic character, or a textual performance enacted and controlled by a rhetor
(oratorical competence). Such characterizations are insufficient because, among
other reasons, they do not incorporate a postmodern critique of the individual in
which, James Baumlin explains, the rhetorical situation renders the speaker an
element of the discourse itself, no longer simply its origin (and thus conscious- ness
standing outside the text) but rather a signifier standing inside an expanded text
(qtd. in Hyde xvii). We begin to see ethos as co-constructed, as a shifting and
subjective relationship among various elements (Reynolds). Considering the
sedimented histories and epistemologies encapsulated in language, we can fur- ther
see that the study of ethics (ethos+ikos)understood as that which pertains to
ethosemerges, then, as a study of the relationships among competing habitual
gathering places or dwelling places.

390 Rhetoric Review
Because consciousness can never entirely stand outside of a text and always
stands within discourse, conscientia, or knowing together (Hyde xiii), pro- vides
the ground for the study of ethics, as Hyde and others have convincingly argued.
Ethos, then, is not merely a component of rhetoric but intrinsic to it foundational
to all else that can be said about the art (Hyde xiv). Thus the study and teaching of
rhetorical invention (that is, what we know and value, a search for available
arguments) theoretically should be indissociable from the study of ethos or ethics
(and, by extension, politics). Yet frequently rhetorical invention is framed solely as
the production of arguments, not as a metaphysical condition of the ontological
structure of existence (Hyde xxi).
Yet rhetorical invention as the source of politics and ethics, each constituting the
other and, taken together, comprising a complex reflexive relationship under-
written by socially derived values and judgment, remains undertheorized. To
address this gap, I import assorted contemporary theories from several disci- plines
to elucidate the complex reflexive relationship between ethics and inven- tion. After
that, given the difficulties that the postmodern critique poses for the teaching of
ethics, I introduce Nancy Tuanas discussion of the epistemology of ignorance as a
means to address some of the essentialist assumptions found in classical and
contemporary pedagogies of ethics, particularly virtue ethics and dialogic ethics (3).
Ultimately, I argue that rhetoricians should more fully take up the subject of ethics
both in their research and in their classrooms because rhet- oricians hold a key to
ethics, a point that Hugh Burns, my RR peer reviewer, astutely articulated as my
grounding assumption.
Doxa and the Ethos of Rhetoric
In Special Delivery John Poulakos asserts that rhetoric derives its ethos from the
principle of topical preference (97). In other words, the habitual gathering place
of rhetoric is the study of human epistemology because what we know and value
our locationsderive from preferences, consciously chosen or not. The study and
practice of rhetoric, then, derive their force from the idea that knowledge is always
incomplete, situated, and contingent; rhetoric both invents and is invented by
humans, individually and collectively. It is precisely this understanding of the
consequences of rhetorical inventionin short, that situated knowledge generates
group partisanship and politicsthat locates rhetoric as fundamentally responsible
for taking up the subject of ethics.
This postmodern view of knowledge, like ancient rhetorical theory, firmly situates
rhetoric in the realm of the social. In other words, rhetoric is nothing less than the
art (study) and the practice of the making of the so-called world. Sharon Crowley
explains that knowledge did not exist outside of language for

In[ter]vention: Locating Rhetoric s Ethos 391
classic rhetoricians (Methodical 3), who understood that doxa, current and
local beliefs that circulate communally (Toward 47) generate the basis of human
experience and epistemology. Doxa are assertions about the way things are what
exists, what human nature is, how the world operates (Toward 67), and though
doxa are in fact arbitrary (Bourdieu), they become naturalized and inter- nalized as
real, that is, as Crowley puts it, consonant with reality (Toward 69). Thus, though
many adults may remember, for example, the effort they once exerted in learning to
tell time (especially when they participate in time-training children of their own),
few people recall what it felt like prior to having internal- ized time, to not know
what a minute or five minutes feels like. When we learn to tell time as children, we
may realize the artificiality of the time-telling process, but over time we tend to
accept the concepts of months and hours as real divisions of reality, rather than
arbitrary human creations.
Doxa generate social norms through language and practice. Hegemonic dis-
courses, Crowley explains, construct and inform community experience to such an
extent that their assumptions seem natural, just the way things are (Toward 12).
Crowley offers capitalism as one such example of hegemonic discourse: [I]t is
difficult to notthink capitalism in America at this time, even though most
Americans seem unable to bring to consciousness their awareness of its effects on
all of us (Toward 67). Critical examination of the effects of our social, political, and
economic structures (such as capitalism) on all of us inevitably leads us to
question whether or not these structures offer the most sustainable ways to ensure
the wellbeing of all people and our planet. This dynamic provides but one example
of the complex reflexive relationship between what isinvention realizedand
what should bepolitics. It also highlights the significance and usefulness of the
study of rhetoric as a means to understand not only how reality coheres but also
how we might employ such study to transform the given into the possible.
Postmodern Agency Historicized
Obviously, doxa change over time, and herein lies the postmodern paradox of
agency. Though doxa are determined by the social, people also determine the social.
Judith Butler offers a solid overview of how humans are constituted by and within
language in Excitable Speech. Though speech acts as a modus vivendi (74) that
interpellates a subject into existence, expanding and changing that subjects
existence throughout its lifetime, speech itself is both citational (repeatable) and
indeterminate and thus open to a subjects exercise of it. Butler describes this
linguistic paradox of the subject as a crossed vector of power (30), and she
cautions readers not to attribute the power of overdetermination to

392 Rhetoric Review
the social realm, even while reminding them that a critical perspective on the
kinds of language that govern the regulation and constitution of subjects becomes
all the more imperative once we realize how inevitable is our dependency on the
ways we are addressed in order to exercise any agency at all. Butler here empha-
sizes that the idea of agency is not foreclosed by postmodernism, but that any
discussion of agency must always be grounded in acknowledgement of the social
context, which, sadly, has grown primarily out of a history of inequity. Many of our
social structures are the products of and responses to historical legacies, out-
growths of customs that differentiate subjects along lines of identificationtoo
varied to list (for example, class, gender)that legitimate who gets to exercise any
agency at all (27).
Language Legacies
In Gender and Genius, a genealogical analysis of the word genius and its concepts,
Christine Battersby powerfully demonstrates the ways that normative social
structures work to create values that exclude certain subjects. Curious as to why she
had never heard the term genius applied to females, Battersby traces the history of
the word from its Greek origin invoking masculine fertility to its con- temporary
exclusionary epideictic uselauding males (exclusively) for their artistic
achievements. Her research shows how current use of the term contains a
sedimented history of its past, a history of patriarchal privilege in which men are
literally and metaphorically deemed superior to women ostensibly because they
contain a creative force that women lack. Battersby invites us to see the effects of
this history on contemporary human society. Though many might feel that civili-
zation has transcended such prejudice, Battersby successfully shows how people
generally continue to attribute genius exclusively to men, illustrating how nomi-
nalization carries within itself the movement of a history that it arrests (Butler
36). Battersbys analysis powerfully demonstrates the power of language to carry
and occlude normative values and assumptions that people unconsciously inter-
nalize during linguistic socialization. Building firmly upon groundwork laid by
research undertaken in the academy during the past forty years, Battersby
demonstrates how extant social systems inhere normative values that maintain
injustice and inequity and that largely determine and legitimate who and what gets
valued, who gets silenced, and who gets to speak.
An Ethical Conundrum of Socially Constituted Selves
Butler and Battersby clearly evoke the ethical dilemma of inequity embedded in a
socially constituted world that precedes and exceeds us. Moreover, Butler

In[ter]vention: Locating Rhetoric s Ethos 393
explains how we duplicate and reduplicate the world unconsciously,
acculturated by language:
One need not know about or register a way of being constituted for that constitution
to work in an efficacious way. For the measure of that constitution is not to be found
in a reflexive appropriation of that constitution, but, rather, in a chain of
signification that exceeds the circuit of self-knowledge. The time of discourse is not
the time of the subject. (31)
We see then, that those who would work to create a better world must do so within
discursive social systems that originate prior to themselves and that will exceed
themselves. Moreover, they must act without fully understanding their own, others,
or the worlds constitution or the ultimate effects of their actions. Here we see the
inextricable bind between ethics and human reality, both of which are rhetorically
constructed and constructive. If ontology (human exist- ence) is invented and not
discretely external to ourselves, then deontology (ethics), that is, what existence
should be, sits squarely within any discussion of a rhetorically constructed and
rhetorically constructive existence. The prefix de- in deontology means bound to,
illustrating the interdependence of ethics and rhetoric, and also suggesting that
what ought to be is always bound to what is.
Rhetoric: Process and Product
A postmodern view incorporates the idea that rhetoric can and does create human
perception of reality. Janice M. Lauer insightfully points out that invention is the
only canon that directly addresses the content of communication as well as the
process of creation (2). This two-fold aspect of invention permits us to see
invention as both a product and a process, ever-intertwined and spinning onward
and outward in time and space, and requires us to define invention in terms that
embrace postmodern notions of intertextuality (and thus indeterminancy) of inven-
tional processes and products. In Kairotic Encounters, Debra Hawhee provides
such a postmodern definition of invention, using the term invention-in-the-middle:
Invention-in-the-middle assumes that rhetoric is a performance, a discursive
materialbodilytemporal encounter, a force among forces (24). This definition
notably incorporates postmodern epistemologys dismissal of the sovereign sub-
ject as an individual who is always rational, conscious, and agentic. Because humans
are constituted in language and in ways unconscious (naturalized) to them, a
postmodern definition of invention must incorporate a postmodern notion of the
subject and portray invention as a ubiquitous process that both continues

394 Rhetoric Review
the process and is productive. It needs to embrace the power of invention to
cre- ate, maintain, interrupt, and change values, as Michael Carter suggests in his
description of the sophistic concept of kairos as the moment in which discourse
becomes real, persuading ourselves and others of the difference between right and
wrong (104). Each moment that we do so, we locate ourselves, claiming (and
sometimes proclaiming) where we standour place.
In other words, invention is agency. Even when we act and speak uncon- sciously,
we are inventing. Hawhees powerful definition crystallizes this idea of rhetorical
forcethe modus vivendi (Butler 74)demonstrating that invention is a mode of
in[ter]vention in the realm of the social. This mode of invention, Hawhee claims,
is not a beginning, as the first canon is often articulated, but a middle, an in-
between, a simultaneously interruptive and connective hooking-in to circulating
discourses (24). Hawhees (and Lefevres) position recognizes that invention is
social and epistemic in both origin and effect (though neither can ever be fully
determined) and may sit anywhere within a continuum ranging from lucid agency to
a mindless reaction. Crowley reminds us that [r]hetorical arguments generate their
own lines of force, and it is not possible to determine, at the point of utterance, what
will be effected by ones having articulated some- thing (Toward 57).
Invention/Rhetoric Is Always Political
Although we cannot determine all possible purposes and effects of any rhetorical
invention, we can remember that all discourse is interested and also malleable to
situation. No preset meaning, no positive residence, can be attrib- uted to any
socially constituted form for all time, since all forms can be appropri- ated for
different uses (for example, a toaster can be employed as a piece of artwork, and a
candle can be used to heat water for coffee). Because epithets can be reappropriated
to self-identify with pride and words can mutate or acquire new meaning, it is
essential to understand that all invention is political and depends upon the situation
for construal of meaning(s). Invention relies upon judgment, and judgment always
assumes a valuing of some sort; otherwise, no meaning would be made: no social
structures structured, no advice given, no stance taken, no action enacted, no word
spoken, nobody namedmore importantly, there would be no disagreement.
If Invention Creates Value, Invention Needs a MateEvaluation
Clearly, dissensus is a human condition, and invention is an ethical issue, always
taking up the subject of value. Definitions of ethics are generally overbroad

In[ter]vention: Locating Rhetoric s Ethos 395
and though they may posit a system (structure) of some sort, as in moral
princi- ples or an ethical code, they do not invoke any specific values for such
systems other than those that are ambiguous or easily disagreed upon, such as the
good, moral, or right conduct. Such terms remain indeterminate and mallea- ble
precisely because of the nature of rhetoric, which shapes and is shaped by the
situations in which terms are enacted. Current disagreements over abortion or
whether one should support the troops and what that support entails illustrate
how ethical issues can be disagreed upon by well-meaning ethical people and also
how ones alignment, ones beliefs, are not only informed by doxa but may also
change over time.
Crowley nevertheless provides us with an opening to discuss ethics. She writes that
beliefs are ours only to the extent that we wield them in argument on occasion;
beliefs and arguments actually circulate in the reflexive relations between culture
and selves that Pierre Bourdieu calls the habitus (Toward 57). Thus, she
continues, if one is concerned to imbue an argument with goodness or badness,
as I am, she is forced to examine its relation to the circu- lation of evaluative
discourse within the relevant context (Toward 57). In other words, humans must
use their intrinsic evaluative faculties (themselves subject to interestedness) to
examine the social conditions circumscribing and participating in any given
situation to determine and assess who might be injured or left out of the process,
that is, who is being insufficiently valued and recognized and for what reasons.
Inclusivity
Inclusion, sometimes called universality, then, becomes a postmodern ethical goal.
Most postmodern theorists posit the ideal of universal inclusion while
acknowledging the constraining forces of invention, which, in the process of
inventing, that is, isolating and evaluating something, setting something off as
discrete (as I am doing when I write these words at the exclusion of others or when I
thoughtlessly choose to yell What! in response to my husbands call from another
rooma call I could have answered face-to-face), tend to circumscribe that
inventional product and thus exclude other possibilities. In other words, no text can
become a text without participating in a process of selection that rules out certain
possibilities, and realizes others (Butler 128). All textual production (invention),
then, is exclusive, operating within a linguistic field of enabling con- straints
(Butler 16). Though clearly texts are partial and political and thus con- struct
disparate existences, the significance of the concept of universality, as Bourdieu
reminds us, is the importance of each and every life, each a particular, singular
existence, which finds itself called into question in its social being (237).

396 Rhetoric Review
Even if unattainable, inclusivity is, nevertheless, a tenable ethical ideal, for
ideals show us what is possible in contrast to what is given (Crowley, Toward 23).
Crowley also reminds us that postmodernism is an ethical preference, that [t]hose
who espouse it [antifoundationalism] obviously value contingency and inclusion
over certainty and exclusion (13). Michel Foucault defines ethics as the conscious
practice of freedom, and somewhat circuitously, freedom as the ontological
condition of ethics (284). Conversely, one might call ethics the ontological
condition of freedom. Freedom, then, is an ethical ideal, and free- dom, Foucault
declares, exists within the socially constituted systems of human existence. Foucault
declares that freedom is inherently political (The Ethics 286), a point that raises
the critical question of how we can create ethical systems in a socially constituted,
that is to say, political world in which everything and everyone is socially
constituted. In other words, how do we change what invents us? This is the
postmodern ethical dilemma.
Disadvantages of Ethical Codes
Before I review a few postmodern theorists frameworks with which we may
analyze and better understand the dilemma were in, let me first discuss why ethical
codesnormative rules of conductare not a panacea. As I mentioned previously,
most definitions of ethics refer to a moral or ethical coderules of conductyet
postmodern thought clearly exposes some of the difficulties with such codes. For
one thing, like anything based in language, they are subject to interpretation. In
Excitable Speech, Butler brilliantly exposes the inability of the US juridical system to
apply a legal code consistently, that is, to uniformly inter- pret the US Constitution
that seeks to establish liberty and equality for all.
Analyzing Supreme Court decisions to determine what constitutes pro- tected
speech under the first amendment, Butler compares two cases argued on the
notion of fighting words (words that act as well as express a message): a cross-
burning ignited by a white teenager in the front yard of a black familys home and
pornography litigation. Overlooking the long history of racism and violence against
blacks that a burning cross evokes, as well as the numerous cases of violence that
historically have occurred against black victims of cross burnings after the
burnings, the Justices ruled that the burning cross was not an instance of fighting
words, but a viewpoint within the free marketplace of ideas, in other words,
protected speech. (53). In contrast, the Court has on occasion ruled that
pornography falls under the purview of unprotected speech for the material harm
it enacts against women. Clearly, the discrepancy between these two rulings,
regardless of what one feels about either case, demonstrates the inefficacy of a
system that claims uniform application but relies upon interpretation.

In[ter]vention: Locating Rhetoric s Ethos 397
The Constitution, like any ethical code, is based in language and thus always
hermeneutically open.
Any postmodern theorist understands that reason cannot be separated from value.
No matter how honorable their intentions, Supreme Court Justices (and anyone
empowered to make rulings that affect the lives of human beings and life in general)
are constrained by their own assumptions, beliefs, and values and are thus
incapable of acting without interest since they, like all people, are socially
constituted and are, therefore, hermeneutic beings. Our rules of law assume a
modern epistemology in which rhetors can detach reason from value and read
legal codes from positions of disinterest. Of course, if modern epistemology were
tenable, all of the Justices would arrive at the same decisions. Butler successfully
argues the very postmodern and Derridean notion of texts as having a life of their
own. Intention does not reside within a text, Derrida reminds us: The reconstitu-
tion of a context can never be perfect and irreproachable even though it is a
regulative ideal in the ethics of reading, of interpretation, or of discussion. But since
this ideal is unattainable . . . the simple recalling of a context is never a ges- ture that
is neutral, innocent, transparent, disinterested (131). However, even if
interpretation could be monitored for contextual parity (an impossible ideal), codes
cannot anticipate every contingency and thus, as the sole basis for serving justice
and making fair and equitable decisions, can and often do fail.
Butler adds another disadvantage of the codification of ethics by demonstrating that
litigation often creates precedents that foreclose the open-ended ideal (90). In the
US legal system, judicial determinations, in themselves, wield power by setting
precedents upon which further determinations will take place, and Butler forcefully
advocates against establishing external codes precisely because of this productive
ability. Established legal precedents, which essentially censor what is and is not
legally permitted, take on a life of their own and in so doing expand the ways in
which the Court can legitimate its interpretations, and thus are coun- terproductive
to a greater universality. As Butler forcefully explains, [E]very postulation of the
universal as an existent, as a given, codifies the exclusions by which that
postulation of universality proceeds. She writes that through the strategy of
relying on established conventions of universality, we unwittingly stall the process
of universalization within the bounds of established convention, naturalizing its
exclusions, and preempting the possibility of its radicalization (90).
Intervention: Theories That Provide Points of Disarticulation
So where does this leave us? If we do not legislate through external ethical codes,
how do we create a better world whose political and social ideals establish

398 Rhetoric Review
inclusivity, pluralism, difference, and freedomideals that also censor (as all
texts must) because such ideals exclude those who would oppose such ideals?
Various postmodernists propose a number of methods by which we might bring
about positive change, and I would be remiss in this discussion if I were to neglect
providing a brief review of a few of their ideas and reconstructive tactics. It is worth
noting, with regard to the writings of the theorists I will discuss, the absence of a
grand narrative (in true postmodern fashion). It is even more note- worthy that
these theorists conceptually invoke the future as an ideal that exceeds our current
ability to envision it: To claim that the universal has not yet been articulated is to
insist that the not yet is proper to an understanding of the universal itself: that
which remains unrealized by the universal constitutes it essentially (Butler 90).
Ethical responsibility toward ourselves and others, then, necessitates critical
awareness of a collectively invented future that may exceed our current inventional
reach.
Interrupting and Subverting Normative Discourse
Butler situates transformative power in the mouths and practices of people. As the
plasticity of ontology demonstrates, humans are inventive linguistic beings. Aware
of the performative power of language, one that cannot be externally con- trolled
(there is nothing outside the text [Derrida 136]), Butler advocates Hawhees
in[ter]vention as quoted earlier, the interruptive and connective hook- ingin to
circulating discourses (24). Citing the activism of queer politics, which has
successfully flooded and subverted normative discourse and achieved positive
change as seen in a greater inclusion and public awareness of homosexuality in
public discourse, Butler shows how those once silenced gain access to the speak-
able. She writes that one who is excluded from the universal, and yet belongs to it
nevertheless, speaks from a split situation of being at once authorized and deau-
thorized. (90). Such speakers, those whose discursive practices break with the
norm, expose the promising ambivalence of the norm. This failure of the norm,
Butler rightfully asserts, is precisely the temporalized map of universalitys future,
the contemporary scene of cultural translation (91). Butler provides a
comprehensive overview of one situation in which postmodern theory can be used
to influence change: when the universal begins to become articulated precisely
through challenges to its existing formulation, and these challenges emerge from
those who are not covered by the existing formulation, who have no entitlement to
it. Her stance, however, demands democratic contestation, concerted efforts on the
part of individuals to queer discourse. Those who theoretically understand this
stance, then, must acknowledge their ethical responsibility to participate by actively
disrupting normative discursive practices.

In[ter]vention: Locating Rhetoric s Ethos 399
Structural Criticism and Education
Pierre Bourdieu takes a somewhat different approach, focusing on the power of
social structures to delimit agency, and in Excitable Speech Butler accuses Bourdieu
of ignoring the disruptive power inherent to language and of attributing too much
determinative power to normative structures. I disagree with Butlers analysis;
however, I take my reading of Bourdieu from Pascalian Meditations, which is not
mentioned in the works cited of Excitable Speech. Bourdieu, I would argue,
recognizes the discursive substance of symbolic power, and yet sees some
individual play permitted within such structural discursivity. Discur- sive power,
Bourdieu writes, can manipulate hopes and expectations that shake up and
emphasize senses of unease and diffused discontents and that leave a margin of
freedom for political action aimed at reopening the space of possibles (234, 235).
Bourdieu does, however, indict our social structures for sustaining injustice, and he
focuses on education and historization as a means to expose how sym- bolic capital
works to create and sustain inequity. Employing the concepts of habitus and field as
structuring structures that create and sustain knowledge and that instantiate
practices yet also yield to them, Bourdieu underscores under- standing (thus
education) as one way to counter the normative power of our social structures and
structuring. Bourdieu implicitly charges the educated and otherwise privileged,
those with capital, to effect positive change, for those without, he announces, are
often precluded: Capital in its various forms is a set of pre-emptive rights over the
future; it guarantees some people the monopoly of some possibilities although they
are officially guaranteed to all (such as the right to education) (224). Bourdieu
explicitly singles out the social sciences to expose social ills: The social sciences,
which alone can unmask and counter the com- pletely new strategies of domination
which they sometimes help to inspire and to arm will more than ever have to choose
which side they are on (83). In recogni- tion of the inequity of distribution,
Bourdieu looks to those he considers better endowed with social capital to
redistribute it by working toward universalizing access to such capital.
The Self as Ethical Project
Redistribution, however, is possible only to the extent that the highly privi- leged
possess a genuinely democratic spirit desirous of equity, fairness, and liberty for
all, values that inhere as deep-seated a care for others as one has for oneself. Such a
caring perspective views individual and collective happiness as interrelated.
Obviously, many people dont share this perspective, and Foucault

400 Rhetoric Review
suggests that ones relationship with oneself in relation to others is at the heart
of ethics. That being true, ethical behavior and practice are not contingent upon
strict adherence to established moral codes but rather depend upon judicious and
informed individual assessment that is flexibly appropriate to the specific situa-
tion. I agree that ethics is largely interiorized, as illustrated by the fact that most
people dont behave strictly according to the moral codes to which they claim to
adhere. Foucault defines ethics as a relationship with oneself, a rapport a soi that
has four parts: (1) the part of self concerned with moral conduct that Foucault
terms ethical substance; (2) mode of subjectivation, peoples moral
ideology/epistemology (for example, divine law); (3) means (methods, mecha-
nisms) by which we behave ethically (for example, abstinence); (4) the telos who
we want to be morally (On the Genealogy 26365). If we are indeed socially
constituted, then these four aspects of our selves are also socially consti- tuted,
leaving us the task of creating a discursive climate that is conducive to cul- tivating
selves that are consciously concerned about the well-being of others. Undertaking
this task is the point of departure that lays the groundwork for ethi- cal behavior
and practice.
As an historian, Foucault beautifully reminds us of the arbitrariness of doxa by
reviewing various time periods in which the self and its relation to others was
constructed differently from its current formationthe modern individual. Two of
the prior dominant epistemologies Foucault discusses include Christianity, from
which the idea emerged that salvation is attained through the renunciation of self
(The Ethics 285), and classical Greek thought, from which the theme the care of
the self arose. Though clearly this theme was highly exclusive, reserved for the
autochthonous (and propertied) male citizen, it highlighted the ethical and healthy
individual as being essential to a well-managed society. What is significant here is
that Foucaults work demonstrates the formative role that epistemologies play in
the making of ethical subjects and, by extension, the place that rhetorical instruction
can play in peoples understanding of the plasticity of ontology and our ability to
shape an ethical social fabric that valorizes each indi- vidual, yet not one over
another.
Recognition of Human Interconnection and the Melding of Nature/Nurture
Teresa Brennan takes a very different tack, a biological one, to make a simi- lar
argument. In The Transmission of Affect, Brennan examines and demonstrates that
the physical connection and interactions between humans are primarily phys-
iological responses to the chemical and energetic productions of others. She makes a
convincing case in submitting that emotions and affects are not inherent

In[ter]vention: Locating Rhetoric s Ethos 401
to the self but rather work like language, a biological code inventing and
invented by people. By doing so, she highlights the biological as a production of the
social and thus supports the postmodern notion that individuals are embedded and
produced in social systems in which they interact, and she argues that the biolog-
ical and the social should not be opposed. Any individual ego, she declares, is
incidental to the well-being of the whole, and understanding the forces of the bio-
logical at work in creating the social, she suggests, helps us to disassociate our-
selves from capitulating to familiar affective patterns, which are forces in human
affairs that can be cleaned up and transformed (164). In this respect, she seems to
uphold Foucaults idea of a (meta)ethic of the self. Foucault tells us that we have to
create ourselves as a work of art (On the Genealogy 262) and that it is our ethical
responsibility to do so. Indeed, all of the postmodernists I have reviewed suggest
that we can create the world as a work of art, for their various approaches show
that the world is art(ifice).
Yet, like Bourdieu, I would agree that the few have more symbolic capital than the
many to accomplish such reflective work and that the freedom (that is, power)
made possible by such capital is integral to the ability to accomplish positive and
meaningful reconstructive work. I hope to have shown that the fields of rhetoric and
composition as well as communication studies are prime areas for such work,
having a rich history upon which to build, a techne that exposes how discourses
naturalize values that are holdovers of a long human history of domi- nation and
inequity. Postmodern thought reveals that humans are interconnected by and
within social systems; no individual is autonomous, discrete. In[ter]vention
constitutes being alive. Because opting out is not an option, it is important, I think, to
remember that postmodern theory is not abstract and distant but palpably real
and valid, capable of exerting an enormous amount of positive influence toward
situating each and every individual as a human being with value who is embedded
in relation to every other.
Essentialisms Underwriting Many Ethical Discussions
Were each of us to embrace such a relational stance toward others as a tena- ble
goal, the world would obviously be very different, and other discourses and values
would compete with the ideals of inclusivity, human interconnectedness, and the
need for ethical engagement.
Most communicative and virtue ethics scholarship, however, seems to assume a
shared standpoint of departurean underlying assumption that all agents want to
enter into respectful communicative relationships and want to consider others
needs and desires. Though many people fit this description, depending upon
context, some people want to be respected but dont wish to

402 Rhetoric Review
respect others, having learned to desire the achievement of their own self-
interests at the expense of others. Late market capitalism adheres to and relies upon
the preeminence of self-interest, and various degrees and versions of social
Darwinism circulate within many fields and discourses. To overlook the power of
discourses that advocate the private pursuit and achievement of professional and
material objectives at the expense of others gravely denies the material and psychic
value conditioning of many of our primary and secondary discourses.
Additional essentialisms underwrite many ethical discussions and are clear
oversights of ethos as socially constructed locations, variable to context. Many
discussions of virtue assume a uniform self whose virtues traverse all fields. Clearly,
no one is always virtuous and, more importantly, always attuned to the needs and
positions of others, for to be so would indicate omniscience of all sub- ject positions
within a given context. Formal and informal education, though, often augment our
repertoire of subject positions, allowing us to recognize stand- points that had
previously been invisible to us. Still, multiple perspectives do not ensure an agents
desire to be ethical. Even in the best-case scenarios, virtuous agents who do
recognize the importance of moral respect (Young), cannot foresee or attend to all
of the consequences of their behaviors, for example, that buying mass-produced
chocolate supports a thriving slave trade among cocoa producers in Africa.
In Reflections on the Metavirtue of Sensitivity to Suffering, Cheshire Calhoun
remarks that systemically produced suffering is not the sort of suffer- ing that one
can address, or address effectively, through individual action. Because suffering is
produced systemically, the solutions have to be collective, involving changes in
social behaviors, practices and institutions (186). Thus, under contemporary
social conditions, injustice is both systemic and the conse- quence of multiple,
intersecting forms of oppression. Those two facts, taken together, mean that it will
be virtually impossible . . . for any agent not to be implicated in the production of
unjust suffering (188). Clearly, then, the notion of virtue ethics, that people can act
nobly and ethically in the traversal of all fields, implodes under scrutiny.
Epistemology of Ignorance
Nancy Tuana emphasizes the need to include epistemologies of ignorance within
feminist epistemologies, that is, democratic epistemologies ideologically
underwritten by ideals of inclusivity and freedom (194). Tuana convincingly argues
that [i]gnorance, far from being a simple lack of knowledge that good science aims
to banish, is better understood as a practice with supporting social causes as
complex as those involved in knowledge practices (195). In other

In[ter]vention: Locating Rhetoric s Ethos 403
words, ignorance is a political act that is often constructed, maintained, and
disseminated (194); [o]ppression often works through and is shadowed by
ignorance (195). Secondwave feminists brought this issue to the fore on many
fronts, from home to workplace gender discrimination, showing that peoples
ignoreanceoverlooking ofquotidian material habits resulted in exclusionary
and oppressive racialized and gendered practices.
Moreover, Tuana reminds us, epistemologies that view ignorance as merely not-
yet-knowing will overlook those instances where knowledge once had has been
lost (195). Indigenous knowledges and diversity of flora and fauna are two
examples of lost knowledge that few (a growing few) consider valuable and worthy
of recovery. Tuana shrewdly reminds us here that we must ruthlessly examine our
standpoints collectively by seeking out knowledge that has been actively discredited
and/or erased. She admonishes us to root out that which we are ignoring. Though
not an easy task, scrutinizing what our epistemologies valueand ignorecan
ethically improve our stance toward knowledge creation.
Educational Implications
For students, this framing of rhetoric and invention fosters a sense of self/ other
that is always socially embedded and dislocates the equation of ethos and intrinsic
character. Although some thus educated may still, at times, choose paths of self
interest at the conscious expense of the wellbeing of others, such an education
nevertheless diminishes the capacity for denial of ones social embed- dedness. For
others the cultivation of this knowledge augments their habitus, facilitating the
traversal of ethical stances across fields. Arguably, most impor- tantly, the
knowledge of invention as an arbitrary social construct enables students to perceive
themselves as social constructions and thus capable of alter- ing themselves and
their habitus at will. As Foucauldian selfprojects, they can choose their own ethical
telos. Such a frame can provide a range of psychic services, too many to mention
here, from allowing some students to grieve and forgive themselves their
socializations to mobilizing others to actively participate in criticizing and changing
social structures around them. Whatever the effect, the study of rhetoric expands
students critical understanding of themselves in relation to others, the
interrelationship between location and learning, and ethos as always incomplete,
framed, and interested.
I argue here that rhetorical understanding of the relationship between
rhetoric/invention and ethics and politics demands that everyone in the fields of
communication studies and rhetoric and composition has an ethical responsibility
to share this disciplinary knowledge, yet many in the field might disagree, as
revealed by the longstanding and recent debates over politicizing the

404 Rhetoric Review
classroom. Moreover, the subject of ethics is generally confined to discussions
of citizenship and public discourse rather than contextualized as invention-in-the-
mid- dle. Though I sincerely value the cultivation of the public self, I hope to have
shown that postmodern inventional theory situates ethics everywhere that inven-
tion takes placethat is, everywhere period. Ethics is our subject. Postmodern
thought makes that clear. Any teaching of rhetoric (including writing as rhetorical
practice) that divorces rhetoric from ethics, then, is not only impoverished
pedagogy but may also constitute unethical practice.
Notes
1I thank my RR reviewer Hugh Burns whose insightful, encouraging, and beautifully
expressed comments were indispensable to the shaping of this manuscript.
2I borrow the term in[ter]vention from Debra Hawhee who uses the term to
describe the god Kairos as a figure that mediates the outside of the self, i.e., the
nodes where the self encounters the world, and the discourse or the other that the
self encounters (25).
Works Cited
Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Arneson, Pat. Exploring Communication Ethics: Interviews with Influential Scholars
in the Field.
New York: Peter Lang, 2007. 11629.
Battersby, Christine. Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics. London:
The Womens P,
1989.
Bourdieu, Pierre. The Historicity of Reason. Pascalian Meditations. Stanford:
Stanford UP, 1997.
93127.