Before I begin, reader (audience), let me explain how I use this blog as “available means” for introducing ideas into our conversation. A key characteristic of rhetoric (the art and the study), both in the classical age and in ours, concerns its emphasis on putting theory into practice. The goal is persuasion of real audiences. In the classical model of rhetorical education, which is what Washington College offered when it began, students practiced rhetoric by using various structures organized in what was called (in Greek) the progymnasmata. I have this idea of engaging ideas through guided practice and discovery with our use of blogs–both mine, and the one you will compose this semester. I also organize our class discussions with this structure in mind, where we will, using the blog structure of initial/closer/further reading, engage with ideas from our study in both conversation and writing.
“Available Means” is thus my elaborate, more rhetorically effective substitute for powerpoint slides and lecture notes. Refer to the blogs I will post weekly here, to the Notes page at the top (which presents an outline for class discussion), to the links to various resources I have collected on the side, and of course to the descriptions of assignments and projects linked at the top.
rhetoric (n.)
early 14c., from Old French rethorique, from Latin rhetorice, from Greek rhetorike techne “art of an orator,” from rhetor (genitive rhetoros) “speaker, orator, teacher of rhetoric,” related to rhesis “speech,” rhema “word, phrase, verb,” literally “that which is spoken,” from PIE *wre-tor-, from root *were- (3) “to speak” (source also of Old English word, Latin verbum, Greek eirein “to say;” see verb).
To begin, let’s define our primary term by way of etymology, the roots of the word. Rhetoric (from the Greek) or Oratory (from the Latin) means at least three things, sometimes overlapping:
[1]Words or literally, that which is spoken (that’s merely rhetoric);
[2]Persuasion, a way of organizing thought and argument (think of the rhetoric that a lawyer uses in court, or a leader giving a speech; but also, the rhetoric used in any presentation to convey ideas and convince the audience of a perspective)
[3]the Study or teaching of rhetoric, a foundational part of the liberal arts tradition (art of rhetoric). The adjective is “rhetorical” or “oratorical.” The name for the person who uses rhetoric is “rhetor,” “rhetorician,” or “orator.”
We will begin our formal study of rhetoric and documentary with the concept of invention–a good place to begin, since invention in rhetoric is where we begin to shape and discover our ideas and arguments for a given topic. Traditionally, the study of rhetoric was divided into five arts or departments known as “canons.” The orator or rhetor (the noun for the person who uses the art of rhetoric) developed a persuasive composition by studying and having knowledge of all 5 sections: invention, arrangement, style, memory, delivery. Classical rhetoric, which means the study of how to use rhetoric (the word is both the subject and the object of the study), liked to break things down into parts that could be learned and used. For example, there were also three branches of rhetoric, where the art of rhetoric was put to use: judicial (or forensic), deliberative (political oratory), epideictic (or commemorative). And Cicero, the Roman orator, identified three purposes for rhetoric: to teach/inform, to move, to delight/entertain. These and other keywords of rhetoric are listed on the Keywords page of this site–and defined in Leith’s Words Like Loaded Pistols.
Aristotle describes rhetoric as the art or faculty of “observing in any give case the available means of persuasion.” Invention begins the process of observing or discovering (another translation for Aristotle’s verb) what’s available for persuasion in a given topic. In the Latin, invention (invenire) doesn’t mean to create from nothing or from original sources or ideas. In fact, it means to come upon or uncover (dis-cover) existing ideas, sources, evidence, topics, and means for making an argument. In this sense, “invention” means not only understanding the topics and ideas you are studying and researching, but arguing for them in relation to how such topics and ideas have been understood in the past. Invention involves the exploration of rhetorical conventions associated with a given topic (“any given case”). In rhetoric, these conventions of argumentation included topics or commonplaces–the topos of “topic” means place in Greek. In Greek, “invention” is called “heuresis,” or discovery–as in “Eureka” (from the same root), but also as in “heuristic“: a template for how to compose a persuasive argument. Invention, then, is a search for structuring devices for an argument. (In college today, invention has largely been reduced to “research” a student might do for a paper. Is it the same?)
Aristotle further divides invention into two kinds of proof: inartificial (or non-artistic, things such as facts in a case or witness testimony that can’t be made or manipulated by the rhetor) and artificial (or artistic, things that can be persuaded, interpreted). The artificial proof is then divided into three types: ethos, pathos, logos. And logical proof divides into two types: deductive and inductive. We will be returning to this in upcoming discussions when we dig further into argumentation and proof regarding the Central Park Five–stay tuned, and plan to return to this post for additional review.
For now, let’s think about invention as a means of discovering the conventions and conventional wisdom, we could also call them the norms, that attach to a given topic and are thus available for persuasion. Part of what makes them persuasive is that they have worked before. Here we can turn to film.
As we begin to learn from Nichols, documentary films follow conventions, much like a literary genre (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama). These are elements of a documentary that help define the tradition, that relate to what other documentaries have done in the past–and yet, at the same, time, these are elements that help to make an individual documentary film seem unique and original. In a word, these conventions that are invented by the documentarian (the noun for the person who creates the documentary film) are what make the composition persuasive. (By the way, this isn’t the only thing that makes them persuasive; sometimes it is also adapting or transforming conventions that works). In the first chapter of Introduction to Documentary, Nichols introduces some of these conventions and modes of documentary film. He also poses the problem of defining documentary as something that engages in reality and the real, but is also more than that: the representation, not just reproduction, of real events, topics, people.
What are some conventions that we can begin to recognize in “Nanook of the North”? These are aspects that make the film persuasive or effective, maybe even seem original and entirely real, but at the same time (once we think about it or do some further rhetorical analysis) are aspects recognizable in other documentaries, are “commonplaces” or techniques that make a documentary work. Think of the way we are first introduced to Nanook: expecting a gritty, realistic portrayal of the actual person, perhaps, we get something else we have come to expect from film and more broadly from nonfiction that documents real people: we get portraiture that strikes me as thoroughly aesthetic and also persuasive.
As Nichols emphasizes in his definition of documentary (p. 10):
Documentary represents real people and events–but delivered through a framework that conveys a plausible perspective on the people/events portrayed, all shaped by the distinct point of view of the filmmaker. This is one way to think of documentary as inherently rhetorical. Any documentary film makes a “proposal, assertion, or claim about the historical world” (18). Another way that Nichols emphasizes that documentary is never simply factual or merely informational: by saying that like a photograph and its indexical trace of the world, it is information in search of interpretation (24), or a representation, not a reproduction, of the real.
Some ideas for further thinking ahead of where we are going.
A question about this rhetorical conception of documentary as “information in search of interpretation.” Are there points in “Nanook of the North” (or the other films we have started to view) when the portraiture and representation exceeds the bounds of documentary convention? Where the treatment of actuality is too creative or artistic, in your view? This question relates to a challenging idea we will continue to explore and wrestle with. Is all proof available for persuasive composition necessarily artistic/artificial? Johanna Drucker suggests this in arguing that all data are in need of interpretation: “Data are capta, taken not given, constructed as an interpretation of the phenomenal world, not inherent in it” (Graphesis).
And reflecting back on our initial discussions of rhetoric, and where we might find it today. This argument for the value of liberal arts education in the 21st century suggests that what’s at stake, what the liberal arts offers every student, regardless of their major, is rhetorical knowledge:
“You go to a great school not so much for knowledge as for arts or habits; for the art of expression, for the art of entering quickly into another person’s thoughts, for the art of assuming at a moment’s notice a new intellectual position, for the habit of submitting to censure and refutation, for the art of indicating assent or dissent in graduated terms, for the habit of regarding minute points of accuracy, for the art of working out what is possible in a given time; for taste, for discrimination, for mental courage, and mental soberness.”
That’s an effective amplification, to my ears, of rhetorical knowledge–one that puts rhetorical knowledge to work in its use of amplification, known in classical rhetoric as auxesis.
Available Means 