ACJ Special: Plots of Ironic Entanglement

Volume 4, Issue 3, Spring 2001

Plots of Ironic Entanglement and Legitimacy: A Response in Criticism, Politics, and Objectivity
Mark E. Huglen
Department of Communication
University of Minnesota, Crookston
MHuglen@mail.crk.umn.edu

The special section of the American Communication Journal, 4.1 entitled “Criticism, Politics, and Objectivity,” initiated a discussion that, I feel, will play an important role in the future of rhetorical theory and criticism. Broadly speaking, the discussion is about criticism that is disinterested science versus strategic criticism for social reform. This issue takes a variety of forms: criticism that strives for politically neutral ground versus criticism that is either implicitly or explicitly politically motivated, rhetoric as performance versus rhetoric as judgment, and/or criticism that strives for objectivity as a goal versus criticism that strategically responds to particular situations. Dialogues like this one is how the field of rhetorical theory and criticism defines itself; however, how theorists and critics dissent and negotiate the issues that are situated will largely determine the predominant view of the rhetorical community and its ensuing scholarly practices.

James A. Kuypers in "Must We All Be Political Activists?" recently amplified the dissension by reacting to a series of editorials penned by Robert L. Ivie in the Quarterly Journal of Speech by questioning and rejecting the assumption that ideology is an unavoidable product of all scholarship. In a second essay, “Critical Claims, Critical Functions: Autoethnography and Postscholarship,” Jill Taft-Kaufmann stakes out a middle position by explaining problems associated with the object/subject pair at their polar extremes before calling for the privileging of some traditional foundations of knowledge. In a third essay, Craig R. Smith concerns himself with the issue of rational argument, the value of securing close textual readings in criticism, and the importance of taking account of an expanded context in his essay “Criticism of Political Rhetoric and Disciplinary Integrity.” Finally, Edwin Black, who in the sixties is credited with shifting the prevailing assumptions of the field regarding Aristotelian criticism with the publication of Rhetorical Criticism: A Study in Method, likens the critic to a judge in the courtroom in his essay "On Objectivity and Politics in Criticism." As this brief review suggests, there is little agreement within the rhetorical community on any of these issues. In fact, the amplification of the dissension has resulted in rigid polarization in ACJ 4.1, which underlines that importance of carrying the discussion further.

While achieving consensus within the dissension on the issues would be too tall an order and not even healthy for scholarship, I feel that establishing a set of guidelines for rhetorical critics would be useful. In moving toward such an end, first, we need to look more closely at Kuypers' entanglement with Ivie to discover what he means with his strategy of polarization. Second, we need to interpret carefully Taft-Kaufmann’s concern over the displacements of “essential modes” and foundations in scholarship, Smith's interest in text/context, and Black’s comparison of the critic with the judge. Third, the positions will be placed in a larger context by exploring three particular examples of normal and abnormal rhetoric for legitimacy and illegitimacy before concluding with a set of guidelines to help people identify legitimate and illegitimate positions within the fray of what has become known as the “barnyard scramble.”

While the present discussion might be interpreted as a thickening entanglement of plots because the truths of the day are at times hidden, coded, and deceptive, we need to understand such entanglements and scrambles are precisely what the concerns over legitimacy and illegitimacy are about in any field. We also need to understand that our agreement may be about the particular entanglements and where the arguments over what is legitimate and what is not pass and fail, and indeed our own agreements will eventually dissolve and fail the tests of change and time because of the consistently paradoxical and ideological nature of rhetoric. Yet, precisely because of the changing nature of rhetoric, a general set of guidelines would help people navigate their way in identifying legitimate and illegitimate positions.

Polar Rhetoric and Entanglement

Kuypers’ essay, “Must We All Be Political Activists?,” illustrates some of the extreme tensions in the rhetorical community. Kuypers reacts to Ivie’s editorials in QJS by questioning and rejecting the assumption that ideology is an unavoidable product of all scholarship. In his first of nine editorials penned in the years 1993 to 1995, “Where Are We Headed,” Ivie states “Through postmodern lenses we see better, for example, what Burke has been trying to teach us about the ideological implications of rhetorical form: from the ingenium of metaphor to the corrective of irony, rhetorical form constructs and reconstructs the motivational perspectives that serve us more or less adequately as equipment for living.” However according to Kuypers, such ideas in the editorials “. . . are, frankly, a rallying call for academics who wish to use criticism as a tool to engage in political activism within the academy.” In Kuypers' view such a motivational perspective put forth in Ivie’s editorials marks “. . . a dangerous moment in the development of rhetorical criticism.” Kuypers argues that in such a perspective objectivity is put into question, and even more forcibly that “objectivity as a goal is denied,” that “critical and artistic freedom of expression” is weakened, and finally, that there is no “viable mechanism for accessing responsibility for the criticism produced.” Kuypers’ positioning, I believe, results in the rigid polarization of the more traditional forms of disinterested criticism versus the type of ideological critique that calls for strategic responses to situations in the world of affairs.

Because people usually resist and perhaps misrepresent statements that suggest change, I see the value in revisiting the kind of criticism that Ivie, QJS editor at that time, had been sanctioning and instituting. I will do this by looking at the QJS editorials that Kuypers so vehemently rejects. In that same QJS editorial of November 1993 mentioned above, Ivie poses the question “Where Are We Headed?,” and he answers as follows: “Toward a fundamental restructuring of the discipline, capitalizing on the ideological turn taken a decade earlier.” No longer will we view, teach, and study rhetorical knowledge as a “content-neutral technique,” Ivie explains, because “The innocent child of modernity has matured into a consenting adult who participates fully in the construction of social and political reality.” The kinds of criticism Ivie initially points to are forms of critical theory, the myriad of postmodern counterparts, and the teachings of Kenneth Burke.

By August 1994 in “Scrutinizing Performances of Rhetorical Criticism,” Ivie speaks of the metaphor of performance, the reality-defining nature of rhetoric, and the reflexive natures of rhetoric in acts of criticism. Reality-defining rhetoric is “about the strategic constructions that organize our lives,” Ivie says, and reflexivity is about the critic’s deliberate construction of knowledge that is “discernable to achieving certain objectives.” In this view, we need to focus on the interplay of motives and the political interests in criticism, as well as the motives and political interests of the critic, “By engaging in a calculated consumption of rhetorical scholarship, we complete the cycle of reflexive reconstructions, which keeps us alert to the interplay of motives in each performance of criticism.” In such a critical performance, Ivie explains, rhetorical practice “cannot be discerned objectively,” and so importantly, because of the reality-defining and reflexive natures and cycles of rhetoric, “Criticism’s status as a persuasive performance requires no less than an equally strategic act of scrutiny if our field hopes to produce incisive and useful knowledge that itself is not rhetorically naive.” In other words, Ivie points toward performance criticism as having a greater sense of legitimacy for the field than that of the more traditional forms.

In a later editorial, “The Performance of Rhetorical Knowledge,” Ivie further refines the perspective by making the distinction between criticisms that are about rhetorical practices versus the performances of rhetorical knowledge. In this distinction, Ivie groups both the modern Aristotelian and Burkian criticism together by explaining if critics “assess the efficacy of the speaker’s chosen instruments” on one hand or expose dramatistically the “tragic strategies of identification,” each criticism would produce “knowledge about rhetorical practice. Criticism directed outward constructs an object of understanding instead of turning inward as a performance of rhetorical knowledge.” In the turn inward toward performance, according to Ivie, criticism can be seen simultaneously as an enactment and a representation. In this way, we see that the reality-defining practice indeed “strategically promotes one interest over another.” While differentiating between good and bad criticism, Burke and Burkianism, Ivie wants us to believe that such practices are in the interests of reinforcing disciplinary practices, enriching achievements, challenging conventions, stimulating imaginations, influencing collective consciousnesses, and even extending itself into the classroom and especially into the community. In the refinement, Ivie strategically marks the importance of using Burke’s teachings for criticism over a lesser desired practice of applying Burkian methods for criticism and makes a convincing case for how such changes toward dramatic performance will benefit the rhetorical community.

By “A Question of Significance,” Ivie is able to address the question of importance by referring to what he now calls the prevailing assumptions of the field: (1) symbolic transaction of social reality; (2) discursive formation of political privilege; (3) symbols contain communicable contents; (4) symbols organize lives; and (5) assumptions and practices require close assessment because by implication they define who we are, what we do, and what we will become. Finally, in the same editorial, Ivie explains more specifically what the significance of performance criticism is. He does it by presenting elements of the “caliber of the critic’s performance”: (1) relevance of discursive features selected for analysis; (2) perception that meaning is formed from features that match the rhetor’s strategic definition of the situation; (3) situation as defined is consequential; (4) listeners or readers can actually experience the drama of discovering the pattern along with the critics; (5) people discern the interests served in the revealing of the techniques; and finally, (6) just as the speaker invites an audience to endorse a view, the critic’s performance invites the reader to experience the world differently. In short, the critic locates and scrutinizes key texts and discursive fragments within a context of interests while simultaneously understanding the reflexive and defining nature of rhetoric through the metaphor of performance. What I feel is that Ivie has provided rhetorical critics with a program and set of guidelines for action and sense of greater legitimacy for the field because of the feeling that there is strength in numbers vis-à-vis the “prevailing assumptions” of the field.

Here Kuypers enters the picture to reject Ivie’s approach to criticism. Reacting to Ivie’s editorials, Kuypers asserts that “Professor Ivie's perspective on criticism is not wholly his own. What he has done is collect and codify left-leaning critical trends which have developed in criticism over the past twenty or so years.” Further, Kuypers envisions those accepting Ivie’s perspective as a “ . . . type of Boolean Joker . . .,” and finds that “Too often political partisanship in the academy turns into urban-liberal agitation-propaganda.” Later in the essay when favoring a form of appreciative criticism over the ideological perspective, Kuypers explains that, “The graceful beauty inherent in appreciation and understanding will be exchanged for the hard marching, rhythmically thumping black boots of critical theory.” To me these assertions reveal deep-seated tensions, divisions, and hostile attitudes towards what many critics consider legitimate. Kuypers’ attitude seems to be that the new perspective is so extreme and illegitimate in comparison with his own view of criticism that disrespectful language, i.e., “Boolean Joker,” is fair game to characterize people who differ from him.

Perhaps it would be useful to explore the strategy of polarization to find out more about the issue of legitimacy and corresponding play of illegitimacy that is inherent in one or the other side of the extreme positions. The strategy of polarization pushes positions to extremes to accept one at the expense of the other. In his 1973 article the “Challenge of Radical Rhetoric: Radicalization at Columbia,” James F. Klumpp defines one such use as “polar-rejective identification.” Klumpp’s article is about the rhetorical strategies used in the Columbia University revolt of 1968, where the environment was polarized between the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the administration. While the traditional understanding of identification and persuasion involves strategies towards the modification of ideas to fit the needs of people and vice versa, the radical strategies of the SDS involved identification without compromise and the rejection of the university administration for various reasons, including the University’s affiliation with the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA). The students occupied four buildings on the campus for seven days. While the President of the University, Grayson Kirk, sought to resolve the polarization without violence, he eventually brought in the New York City Police to clear the buildings, which resulted in violence. Quite interestingly, the charge by the SDS of the illegitimacy of the President’s earlier statements against violence, according to Klumpp, became the very fulfillment of their (SDS) charge of illegitimacy later when the police used violence to clear the buildings (146-156).

However in the present case of polarization and the charge by Kuypers of the illegitimacy of Ivie’s perspective as political activism, Kuypers doesn’t really reveal or show others just what the other more traditional perspective is in practice, or what he is standing for and promoting in what we might say are “highly political” actions themselves. Polar-rejective identification is a value-weighted strategy for those working from the extreme positions. Near the end of his essay, in so many words Kuypers “challenges” critics of the Iviean perspective to “prove assumptions,” and provide “guidelines” along with a mechanism for “accessing responsibility.” Interestingly, if we look to the Rhetoric and Aristotle’s strategy of applying what was said back against the other, we see that the onus of proving assumptions is, paradoxically, on Kuypers, and not Ivie. Why? Because, Ivie’s perspective and assumptive framework is already explicit, while in contrast Kuypers alludes to something else that is not wholly known in terms of proving assumptions, the provision of providing guidelines for his own criticism, or offering any mechanism for accessing responsibility for his own commentary. Therefore, the “ghost,” we might say, of illegitimacy that came back to haunt the President of the University at Columbia after he had to change his position likewise appears to be staged only to haunt Kuypers in this drama and not Ivie. Because, rather than standing on politically neutral ground, Kuypers’ charges against Ivie in terms of the “dramatic action,” are at core, politically motivated and polar-rejective: and, his value-laden strategy of polarization leaves no room for any modifications, and/or adjustments. In other words, the irony is that as Kuypers actively engages and rejects political activism, he, simultaneously, is actively indicting himself with the very form of criticism he is trying to reject.

Amidst this plot of ironic entanglement, however, we ought to be paying more attention to something Kuypers has reminded us to consider: that we need a mechanism for accessing greater responsibility in criticism. But before such attention, we need to consider the contributions provided by Taft-Kaufmann, Smith, and Black.

Plots of \\Essentialist Moods// and Conversations

In another essay, “Critical Claims, Critical Functions: Autoethnography and Postscholarship,” Taft-Kaufmann articulates the need for rhetorical critics to make judgments with confidence by having access to established modes. Such an approach is about securing an anchor for making confident judgments. Taft-Kaufmann posits the two extremes of “subjectivity" and “objectivity" before calling for a move to the middle. She further secures the middle by calling for the protection and even privileging of established foundations of knowledge in the field of communication. On one hand, according to Taft-Kaufmann, “ . . . those who hide behind unquestioned objectivity create an illusion of the world rather than address the way ideas and events work in it.” But on the other hand, “ . . . those who limit themselves to subjective discourse assert that no idea is better than another and relinquish the critical thought necessary to evaluate competing claims of knowledge.” What the latter position does, Taft-Kaufmann argues as she equates it with autoethnography, is “undermine the confidence to make judgments,” and devalues and displaces “essential modes and priorities of critical thought.” Then, after calling for the middle ground within the public forum, Taft-Kaufmann refers to David Zarefsky’s analogy of the “`social glue’” that helps us “work towards collective goals." I believe she has a good idea that a common set of assumptions is useful for discussions in public forums, but I also believe that we walk directly into some prickly thickets when we talk about essential modes and priorities.

In fact, Taft-Kaufmann moves farther to solidify the middle when she alludes to the protection and privileging of foundational knowledge: “Those in power and those on the margins have dynamically created, in a dialectical process, foundational knowledge [emphasis mine], which has provided reference points for dialogue, debate, and change within academia.” The appeal to essentialist modes and foundations has been scrutinized in our and other disciplines and has yet to pass the tests of time. The changing, ideological and paradoxical nature of rhetoric undermines attempts to hold rhetoric in such ways.

Foundationalism assumes that people can arrive at rock-bottom truth, or Truth; and from that anchored base of pure essence build knowledge story by story like the floors of a modern-day skyscraper: The exemplar is Rene Descartes. Of course, the legendary yet incessantly negated mind-body distinction is a hallmark characteristic of Descartes’ Cartesianism. Instructive places to look for a general summary of and arguments against foundationalism are Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and Tom Rockmore’s Anti-foundationalism: Old and New. Rockmore explains three forms of foundationalism: (1) ontological, (2) perceptual, and (3) principled and/or categorical. First, ontological refers to a direct grasping of an “underlying sphere of reality,” in which “thought penetrates from appearance to essence” as in Platonic theory and more recently in Husserl and Heidegger. Second, perceptual refers to the belief that indefeasible perceptual statements can be true by necessity and hence correspond in some perfect way with what is out there in nature. Third, principled and/or categorical assumes that principles or categories can be the grounds of knowing and being: examples are Aristotle’s law of the excluded middle as a necessary condition of rationality, the Cartesian cogito as undeniable, Hegelian Being, the categories of Kant, Fichte, and Hegel, and the post-Kantian dispute over necessary principles of ground (4-9). Foundationalism is the philosophical position presupposed and accepted for the assumption that \\disinterested scholarship// is possible to achieve.

In “Criticism of Political Rhetoric and Disciplinary Integrity,” Craig R. Smith endorses a position called “hermeneutic phenomenology”: that critics should take account of an expanded context, secure close textual readings in criticism, and demonstrate their criticism through rational argumentation. Smith does this by positioning himself with Heidegger, Husserl, and Wayne Brockriede respectively. The entanglement, I feel, involves the degree to which Smith’s commitment to Heidegger and Husserl drifts toward the side of foundationalism as the underlying principle versus a drift towards the prevailing assumptions of the field that scholarship is ideologically interested and politically construed. Providing clues to this drift, Smith states: “As a hermeneuticist, I would argue that phenomenology provides the horizon in which interpretive understanding occurs free of cognitive interference” and this “ . . . requires bracketing out how objects are mis-perceived in the everyday world . . .” Smith shows signs of accepting all three forms of foundationalism: “ontological” because of the appeal to Heidegger and Husserl, “perceptual” because of the interest in misperceptions and the corresponding assumption that there are correct perceptions, and “principled/categorical” because of the appeal to rational argumentation. The drift toward foundationalism for criticism is that rhetoric flows toward refinement and closure, and eventually in the extreme case toward its’ congealment and trajectory into essential Being. Foundationalists equate Being with pure essence--free of cognitive interference. Whereas, ideologists see Being as a value-laden and context-bound trajectory of rhetorical, social, and political makeup--characterized in a world of change of what Bernard Brock calls “symbolic coherence” (28-30), where concerns over power, privilege, and the interests served are extremely important.

For \\disinterested scholarship// to occur, the critic must hold the incredible yet false assumption in my view that humans can actually bracket-off from the phenomenon, crossover a threshold to pure essence, and then talk about it as an authoritative Presence in their criticism. If, and only if, foundationalism could somehow hold as a grounding principle, then people could legitimately observe, discover, and defend the things that were thought to be mirroring nature: hence, the arguments and practices of the people involved would be focusing upon first locating, second securing, and then defending that pure foundation. However, no foundationalist position throughout the history of the world has been able to withstand the changes of time for the long haul. This is precisely the juncture that marks the shift away from attempting to secure and speak from the position of correspondence with nature’s foundations to focusing on what people are doing, what people are making, and what interests people are serving with rhetoric. I believe foundationalism and the mind-body distinction is outdated and falls short of the more legitimate understanding that the mind and body are intricately connected--making rhetoric and the things that people make value-laden and context-bound.

As an example of value-laden and context-bound rhetoric, the “Challenger Space Shuttle” as a product of human aptitude and congealment into machinery is both a literal and symbolic symbol of the point I wish to make. As we remember so well, Burke instructs us of such distinctions and discriminations in his article “Dramatism,” and also provides clues to such distinctions on the way to developing the familiar pentad and the movements of ratios in A Grammar of Motives. In what I see as the discussion of thought processes metaphorically, Burke says, “Distinctions, we might say, arise out of a great central moltenness, where all is merged. They have been thrown from a liquid center to the surface, where they have congealed. Let one of these crusted distinctions return to its source, and in this alchemic center it may be remade, again becoming molten liquid, and may enter into new combinations, whereat it may be again thrown forth as a new crust, a different distinction” (xix). There are ranges between the fluid and more purely crusted-over forms within the congealing of value-laden and context-bound developments: While the “Challenger” depicts a very highly developed symbolic form of human congealing and construction, so highly developed we call it “machinery,” we know too well that the “Challenger” was not absolutely perfect--it blew up and disintegrated in the sky. What blew was not corresponding in some pure way with an essence of nature, humans created the “Challenger”: it carried our value-laden and context-bound distinctions as a hovering symbolic and symbol of the human condition “out there in the sky,” but reminded us quite forcibly as it disintegrated that we humans nor even our extensions into machineries are not perfect.

We do indeed make impressive rhetorical symbols both mechanistic and social, which have intricate and complex designs--we should celebrate the good and reject the bad. What needs careful critique are the totalizing social theories and philosophies that have been constructed with wrong or mistaken motives and out of wrong or mistaken foundations. In the extreme cases, the gory realities and appalling reminders of the Holocaust, Bosnia, and other sites of psychological and physical violence are examples of the socially and politically “rotten” side of what people make through their social congealing, trajectories, and projections. The similarity between a totalitarian theory in academia such as foundationalism and a totalitarian regime of the world is that the value-laden and context-bound rhetoric of both moves toward closure, but the difference is that each whether inside or outside the walls of academia has particular details and circumstances to be considered. The particularity is what warrants the individual critique and analysis rather than a blanket indictment. I believe that the acceptance and/or rejection must be determined through particular cases rather than by association, generalization, and/or canonical categorization.

If the focus shifts away from locating and mirroring essential nature and arguments over it, we arrive again at that important juncture: where standards flow towards humans and our relations. The concern is over who we are, what we do, what we make, what we hide, and what we become in and with our use of rhetoric. Ernest Sosa sees Rorty’s take on this shift from nature to people as the “salon” (Knowledge in Perspective 89-94): Rorty says this becomes “. . . a matter of conversation between persons, rather than a matter of interaction with nonhuman reality” (Philosophy and The Mirror of Nature 157). This also fits Burke’s familiar statements regarding the “parlor conversation” (Philosophy of Literary Form 110-111). In “Dramatism,” Burke says succinctly that people petition people, not objects (449-451); therefore, I see that the entanglement between the foundationalist and ideologist involves the tensions between focusing on and arguing from some pure correspondence with the objects of nature versus focusing on and talking from the standpoint of human relations. The irony, if the essential foundation existed, is that people need to use argumentation and debate--rhetoric--to articulate foundationalist positions. Because people live and function in a world of change, the very activity of talking or arguing about an essential foundation is inherently paradoxical and therefore automatically disqualifies the assumed of something that is authoritatively essential. Rhetoric--argumentation, debate, dialogue, and conversation--exists in a world of change.

The juncture of ironic entanglement is that the foundationalist cannot demonstrate, transfer, and/or defend his or her position of certainty without acting in the contingent world of change. Legitimacy, therefore, is accepting the paradoxical and ideological nature of rhetoric. In likening the critic to the judge in the courtroom, I see Black’s position in ACJ 4.1 as a step out of strict foundationalism and into the contingent norms of the official establishment decorum of public interest and social order. Black is offering a critic that (who) judges, governs, and legislates action within the norms of society. The danger has to do with how high above or how intricately connected the critic is with the world of affairs. While Black’s analogy is an attempt to establish greater legitimacy for the critic, it can go only so far in both strengths and weaknesses: the strengths include having the availability of official modes for enforcement after judgment, however the weaknesses include the inability to preclude oneself from the functions of the system. Because, we know that the functions of the system are human constructs that are normative and full of entanglements and error.

Ironic Entanglements and Legitimacy

The step out of foundationalism and essentialism, in reality, is into the functioning of rhetorical norms, and locating the “legitimate” within the functioning of rhetorical norms is an elusive task. Paul Watzlawick’s discussion of the fighter pilots during war will help us understand the quandary of legitimacy. Watzlawick tells the story of Yossarian, a pilot with a U.S. bomber squadron in the Mediterranean during World War II, who was feeling the stresses of the daily combat missions and therefore was losing his mind. As Watzlawick tells the story, short of dying in action the only way out of the situation for the fighter pilot was to be grounded for psychiatric reasons. Accordingly, the pilot began to explore this possibility, and talked with the medical staff and learned that being grounded was possible--all Yossarian would have to do is ask. As Watzlawick tells the story, this is where the regulation of Catch-22 enters the communication situation: fearing for one’s life in a dangerous situation is a completely normal response. Interestingly, this reveals the insight that pilots who are actually willing to fly in such combat missions would have to be crazy, and likewise such pilots who are indeed crazy could be, or even should be, grounded for psychiatric reasons. However, the ironic entanglement is that by asking to be grounded from flying, the very asking is evidence of normalcy, which in turn rules out the excuse for being grounded for psychiatric reasons (Watzlawick 25). The ironic entanglement in this example helps to illustrate the point that legitimacy is not always found in the prevailing norm.

One does not have to look very far to find other contemporary examples of ironic entanglements between the normal and abnormal. In the popular television series, M*A*S*H., “Klinger” reacts in ways that illustrate this point about the normal and abnormal. In the series, Klinger dresses in women’s cloths--trying for a “section eight,” which in military terms means mentally unfit for duty--a release for psychiatric reasons. If we look back to the Watzlawick example, we see that reacting in some way to get out of dangerous situations is a completely normal response. In one sense, when we see Klinger walking around in women’s clothing within the norms of the wartime scene, we might view him as a “crazy.” In this sense, we would view this person as the abnormal in the “more normal” situation--in other words what seems to be normal is what fits the prevailing rules of the existing communication situation. In another contrary sense, if we view war itself as insane, crazy, and as the abnormal, then we see Klinger’s attempts to be released from duty by wearing women’s clothing as the appropriately normal actions of a person reacting to and trying to get away from the insanities of war. Klinger did not try to conform or fit into the prevailing norms of the abnormal war; he rejected them and therefore became the abnormal in the norm or the normal in the abnormal situation: greater legitimacy sometimes lies in what is perceived as the abnormal/normal or normal/abnormal.

Another scholar, but of psychiatry rather than communication, Thomas Szasz, discusses how judgment and classification function to pre-write the legitimacy of mental institutions. In Ideology and Insanity, Szasz points out that psychiatrists deal with many different people and must judge them for purposes of classification, or relinquish their roles as the psychiatrists. Confronted by many different kinds of people, what should the psychiatrist do? The psychiatrist “classifies them,” according to Szasz, “Some he [sic] calls `schizophrenics,’ some `manic-depressives,’ some `hysterics,’ and so forth” (211). As Szasz explains the classifications are strategic: first, the institution needs to know who warrants admittance to the hospital and who does not, and second, the institution needs to know who will cooperate and who will not. According to Szasz, such classification does not serve the needs of the patients, but the psychiatrists: “The reason for this lies not in some moral defect in the psychiatrist, but rather in the situation: one cannot be a classification officer without classifying. The psychiatrist who assumes this role is like the judge: he [sic] must pass public judgment on other people or relinquish his [sic] role” (211). Legitimacy for the institution and hence society grows out of the socially constructed functions that exist as official procedures and protocols of the particular institution in question: the psychiatrist just like the judge must perform the function that is tied to the protocols of the existing norms or relinquish the role.

Judgments and classifications function to define and legitimize the reality for the institution and for society. According to Szasz, “As classification officer, the psychiatrist fulfills important functions for both the mental hospital and the society he [sic] serves. Above all, he [sic] legitimizes and defines the institution as a `mental hospital,’ in which only mentally sick individuals are confined” (211). Once judged and classified as mentally sick, however, the ghost of illegitimacy may potentially haunt the institution here: “Psychiatrists often assert that there are no `normal’ people in mental hospitals. Moreover, the public likes to be reassured that no one is ever `railroaded’ into such a hospital” (211). Therefore, if the person is classified as a “patient,” and complies, then there is no problem: if the classified stays at the institution, then the stay is for the patient’s own good, and moreover if the classified is released from the care of the hospital, then this means that the person improved and is now healthy (211). In terms of a compliant patient, the institutional and societal legitimacy seems secure and unquestioned.

However, if the person is wrongly classified initially and non-compliant from the start, then the ironic entanglement is that there is no recourse for the person to escape. The function of classifying would help the classifier and the institution in this instance, but not the wrongly classified person because there would be no escape per se. The ghost of illegitimacy in this plot has to do with the institution as the site of recurrent and self-fulfilling legitimacy--whether legitimate or not. The fact that the commitment into the institution always defines and therefore always results in a mentally ill patient means that the question of legitimacy is an already-answered-question for the institution whether the person is really ill or not because the only way for the person to be released at this point is to comply and get better. Similarly, the person who is wrongly sentenced by the judge and jury of the courtroom setting is found in the same plot of ironic entanglement. Therefore, the institutional entity of whichever kind would stand as an illegitimate legitimacy or legitimate illegitimacy in such an instance depending upon the particular case. If we agree that not all judgments are perfect, then we ought to be able to further agree that a critique is needed by someone positioned outside the protocols of the established system, but ever so importantly down inside the fray of the scramble to get at that greater legitimacy. Legitimacy is situational and very particular.

Conclusion

My position from the beginning of this essay is that considerable disagreement and even polarization in the field over the significant issues of rhetorical theory and criticism is good. A rhetorician must “call it the way one sees it.” Further, I believe that disagreements will most likely never resolve into one clear way to see the field and world. Additionally, one way to agree is to see the scramble as a conglomeration of particular plots of ironic entanglements, which has plots with greater or lesser legitimacy regarding this or that issue. The ghosts of illegitimacy in any of the examples in this essay do not refer to real ghosts, or with anything extraordinary regarding the protocols and creeds of a particular social order, or even with any type of credible or incredible scientific observations and explanations per se, but with the consistently paradoxical and ideological nature of rhetoric. In other words to locate and confer legitimacy, we must stay in the barnyard in the midst of the squabbles: What we need, however, is a set of guidelines to help people identify the more or less legitimate within it. I recommend these guidelines for sorting out our entanglements.

Guideline #1: Remember that the kind of legitimacy that we can agree upon is found down in the fray and not above it, and that no position throughout the history of the world has withstood, in any perfect way, the challenges of change and time for the long haul.

Guideline #2: People make things with rhetoric, but legitimacy or illegitimacy is often hidden in plots of ironic entanglements.

Guideline #3: Numbers and consensus are signs of legitimacy, but neither automatically confers it. However, numbers and consensus are signs of how theorists and critics have negotiated and legislated the issues within the rhetorical community for the predominant view.

Guideline #4: Polarization designed to reject a position without presenting significant reasons for accepting the desired position does not confer legitimacy.

Guideline #5: Defending a middle position between extremes strategically increases the feeling of consensus but does not necessarily confer legitimacy.

Guideline #6: Extreme positions and actions are not automatically illegitimate because they may be justified by extreme situations.

Guideline #7: Rational argument derived from the norms and functions of society is a sign of legitimacy, but it does not automatically confer it.

Guideline #8: The discovery of legitimacy or illegitimacy in positions taken by people is gained through the critique of the plots of entanglement and paradox through a combination of substantive and situational augments or judgments.

Guideline #9: Each position needs to have its legitimacy established or illegitimacy exposed independently, because neither one is necessarily gained through association, generalization, and/or canonical categorization.

Guideline #10: Review and revise this list, because the legitimacy guidelines are continually open for critique.

Works Cited

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The author thanks Bernard L. Brock for detailed comments and helpful suggestions.