Potential rhetoric

Traditional rhetoric was a strategic venture in persuasion, featuring a rhetor consciously making arguments in rhetorical situations to a particular group of people. Ideas of identification and attitude (Burke), individuals and societies (Dewey), and rhetoric and dialectic (Plato, Aristotle, Kasteley), have helped me understand a new way of looking at rhetoric, exemplified in my own life in regards to politics and Facebook.

I do a lot of reading about politics—I thoroughly enjoy the back-and-forth that constitutes my mixed list of opinion and news sources. When I find a particularly compelling argument, I often post a link to that argument on Facebook (or another similar social site). Most of the time I’m not even sure who’s reading the stuff I post, and there’s really no way to tell. But, my justification for doing this comes from a new realization I had while studying this past semester, and that realization boils down to the the difference between kinetic rhetoric and potential rhetoric.

Kinetic energy is exhibited when a paint can falls and splatters all over the floor. Kinetic energy is expended to get an object moving now. Kinetic persuasion, then, is the focus of traditional—or, as Burke would call it, “old”—rhetoric (“Rhetoric Old and New”), the kind where a single rhetor marshals the available means of persuasion, stands up in front of an audience, and works to change minds the moment his argument is heard.

Potential energy is a different story, a story I learned partly through Burke’s explanation of art as primarily based on experience (Counter-statement 77). Where kinetic energy puts a paint can on a ladder, potential energy promises future energy stored in that paint can. In order to increase potential energy, one must simply move the paint bucket higher up on the ladder. The same is true for rhetoric: potential persuasion is the kind that is more focused on networks and relationships—what Burke often calls “identification” (“Responsibilities of National Greatness” 37)—and less focused on winning hearts and minds. Potential rhetoricians, then, are more engaged in the art of small talk than the art of argumentation. They know that, in order to be persuasive in the future, they must focus on relationships now. They understand exactly what Burke and Dewey understood: while bullet points and tropes are rhetorically effective, some persuasion is more about bringing people together and uniting around common values.

Because of this understanding, and as I have come to value the work of aesthetic theorists like Burke and Dewey, I value communication and interactions like my political postings on Facebook: rhetorical in nature but not in purpose. These posts can unify people and help them bond in meaningful ways. I can greatly increase my persuasive energy as I build these relationships and bonds—as I move the paint bucket higher and higher on the ladder. Eventually, when the time is right, I’ll make some kinetic argument that will push the bucket off the ladder. True potential rhetoric is not strategic, though: its highest power comes from building true relationships without strategically plotting at all. Potential rhetoric is more about the network than the agenda.

Works Cited:

Burke, Kenneth. Counter-Statement. University of California Press, 1968. Print.

—. “Responsibilities of National Greatness.” The Nation 1967: 46-50.

—. “Rhetoric–Old and New.” Journal of General Education V.April (1951): 203-209.