Fish on Rhetoric

This essay offers a defense of rhetoric in the face of criticism that “rhetorical man manipulates reality” and “fabricates himself” and therefore that “all rhetorical language is suspect.” Fish offers a historical overview that provides evidence of the mounting perception that rhetoric is dangerous, a reputation that has devalued the art of “persuasion.” This history examines the dichotomies used to interpret language, first listing many binary oppositions used in the past to qualify rhetoric, and then concentrating on his own set such as, serious versus rhetorical, truth versus illusion, constative versus performative, ect. Fish begins his history with the heralded fathers of rhetoric, the philosophers of ancient Greek. But in addition to the well-worn quotes from Aristotle, Plato, and the Sophists, Fish also includes a few rare gems that emphasize his devotion to exposing the absurdity of the accusations against rhetoric. For example, the humorous moment when Fish cites Isocrates as arguing that studying geometry and astronomy is futile since are “wholly divorced from our necessities” but that “reason and eloquence,” (the definition of rhetoric in this essay), “transformed them from wild savages to gentle folk." This evokes the age-old question still debated across the education system, which field poses the greater threat to society, the study of nature or language?

On one hand, Fish invites the reader to consider that rhetoric brings a “genuine political process” where before there was only power of physical strength. But the overwhelming evidence in this essay aims to traces how rhetoric was discredited as “all show, grounded in nothing by its ow empty pretensions.” While the rhetorical man has been portrayed as an immoral panderer and a silver-tongued devil, Fish declares him to be the only legitimate seeker of truth.

Ulitmately, Fish ends by stating that rhetoric is back in fashion because of “what has been called the interpretive turn, the realization that the givens of any field of activity...are socially and politically constructed.” However, immediately following discussion of economics refutes his claim. As presented in this article economists are of the opinion that a strong discipline should be free from political influence - an attitude that stands in opposition to the “upswing” previously mentioned. Yet, I found the following explication of Kuhn’s interpretation of “paradigm” very convincing. Kuhn argues that a scientific method based solely on observable facts will only suffice until conflicts results occur, and the disagreement must be settled through rhetoric- specifically argument and persuasion. The response from the scientific community, supported with the work of J.L Austin opens up an interesting debate. Can there be an utterance - a language - that is “context-independent” and “offers objective reports on an equally independent world” such as those utterances Austin calls constative versus the context-driven “performative” utterance? Austin eventually revised his theory to apply context to constative statements, and I have to agree it seems impossible to separate the two. This of course implies huge consequences for seemingly constative texts - such as text books, news reports, etc, that are in fact rhetoric moves loaded with political influence, even if unintended.

As expected, Fish ends with a manifesto in support of deconstruction. Claiming that the unity of a text must be called into question because of the underlying history at work in a text that may have been concluded or excluded. Fish writes “Derridean deconstruction does not uncover the operations of rhetoric in order to reach the Truth; rather it continually uncovers the truth that all operations, including the operation of deconstruction itself, are rhetorical.” It seems, according to Fish, that our emancipation from these hidden articulations will come with the continuous repeated act of deconstruction. However, I think the language of salvation is a bit extreme, and his use of rhetoric a bit too overblown for an essay on eloquence.