Political science,political ideas and rhetoric

The article reviews ‘ideational’ analysis and theory in political science. It argues that this is an important area of research limited by lack of a clear sense of what ideas in politics are and of how to analyse them as directly as possible. It is argued that political science should learn from the ‘rhetorical turn’ in various areas of the social sciences, developing ways, appropriate to political science, of analysing the language, rhetoric and argumentation of political and policy discourse in its governmental contexts. Such an approach rests on a strong sense of the dynamic, contested and creative nature of political activity.     

Developing a rhetorical analysis of racist humour: examining anti-black jokes on the Internet

Racist humour is frequently the subject of media and public debate in relation to issues of offence and acceptability. Despite this, little has been done to analyse it or its relationship to other forms of racism. I argue that an analysis of racist humour needs to account for the rhetorical structures of humour – to consider humour as a rhetorical device similar to metaphor or metonym – that has a persuasive potential. Using jokes from four US websites, the rhetorical aspects of humour are unpacked through the use of rhetorical discourse analysis and semiotic theories of humour. I then identify an important effect of racist humour. Zygmunt Bauman's ideas on the problem of ambivalence for dichotomous discourse and category formation are employed to argue that racist humour expresses racist dichotomies and has the potential, among others, to “hide” the ambivalence to which such dichotomies are prone. The article then considers the meaning and ambivalence of less severe racist joking.     

The Public Eye and the Citizen-Voyeur: Photography as a Performance of Power

This paper argues that photography is best grasped not as a medium of visual communication, but as a manifest performance of the power to make visible. As such, photographic practices are central to the experience and demarcation of private/public boundaries in advanced media cultures. In the private domain, photography is both a ritualized domestic activity and provides conventional and definitive representations of the domestic. These functions are ostensibly opposed to photography's role in the public realm: the same visual technology becomes, in the mass media, both the index and agent of publicness itself, with the paparazzi?especially in the aftermath of Princess Diana's death?symbolizing the violation of the private. The paper explores the ways in which photographic performance at the public/private boundary dramatizes power relations through forms of social transparency, voyeurism and memoralization. It also asks whether momentary crises in the dominant scopic regime can provide the basis for alternative ‘uncanny’ visual practices that are tenable and empowering.     

On Public Action

Abstract

This essay explores Hannah Arendt’s contribution to our understanding of the rhetorical as opposed to the aesthetic quality of public speech, with an emphasis upon her conception of opinion and glory. Arendt’s focus on the revelatory quality of public action in speech is widely understood to preclude or seriously limit its communicative aspect. I argue that this is a misunderstanding, and that accepting it would reduce speech not merely to the discussion of a sharply limited set of topics, but to no topics at all. Public action is speech that reveals the speaker as “answering, talking back and measuring up to whatever happened or was done.” Such revelatory speech is most appropriately judged by the standard of the glorious and the inglorious. Because such speech must inform as well as reveals, so does glorious or great speech rise to the level of greatness in part because of what is said, to whom, where, and how. Arendt’s understanding of this is shown to have significant parallels to the ordinary language philosophy of Stanley Cavell.     

Terrorism and the media

The linguistic turn in political science is an important step toward more sophisticated political knowledge. Greater awareness of political language implies attention to words such as reason. Reason is central to modern political discourse because of its historical and cultural importance and because of the contemporary dominance of the rational choice paradigm. Reason the concept therefore justifies closer scrutiny of reason the word. The meaning of reason is constructed as a variable. Standing by itself, reason seems relatively shapeless and empty; dictionary definitions are circular and tautological, although some subtle nuances derive from the network of reason's root words. Most of the variance in the meaning of reason is determined by other words that surround it, with a significant portion of reason's meaning being defined by its context. Anterior meaning shifters, nominal referents, spatiotemporal modifiers, and textual narrative all surround reason and fix it in a large lattice. The meaning of reason in use varies continuously. From this perspective, it becomes clear how reason functions as an important rhetorical trope in political discourse. Its plasticity and flexibility help reason stimulate and evoke variable mental images and responses in different settings and situations, all the more important because these go largely unnoticed. The example of reason of state shows reason's rhetorical power and privilege, its normative dimension, its persuasiveness, and its consequences. Seen in this light, a weak version of reason of state is preferable to a strong one. Pluralistic reason opens new paths for democratic thought and political action.     

As the word turns: Drama,rhetoric, and press coverage of the Hill‐Thomas hearings

Because of the unique character of the Hill‐Thomas hearings, journalists were left without a stock political plot to render the proceedings in familiar terms. Using narrative and rhetorical analyses, the study examines how newspaper journalists turned to so‐called women's entertainment genres such as soap opera and melodrama to dramatize and ultimately depoliticize the hearings. The study identifies four recurring rhetorical themes—melodrama, eroticization, agon, and privatization—that served to frame Hill's allegations of sexual harassment against Thomas not in terms of social and political debate but in terms of drama.     

特定修辞方法在法律文书中的应用

在法律文书中,特定修辞的出现频率不高,但却是不容忽略的语言现象。文章旨在分析几种特定修辞方法在具体文书中的应用,从而避免在法律文书制作过程中滥用修辞,做到用语规范。     

欧洲女翻译家宣言——玛格丽特·泰勒对赞助修辞的颠覆性解构

在《〈骑士伟迹之镜〉译者序》中,玛格丽特·泰勒对权力阶层强加于作为他者存在的非权力阶层的赞助修辞、尤其是对该修辞所遵循的自贬—请求—报效的逻辑,进行了颠覆性的解构。研究其颠覆性本质、特征和意义,将为我国翻译界研究文艺复兴之初的欧洲女性翻译家的创作状况,以及欧洲女性翻译写作话语权的形成,提供重要的参考。     

司法裁判中的隐性知识论纲

作为现代认识论的重要课题的隐性知识论的价值不仅在于揭示了隐性知识的存在,更在于论证了知识的本质是隐性的。司法隐性知识问题在当代英美法系司法实践中得以显现并在相关法学著述中多有表述。在我国大陆,司法隐性知识也广泛存在于案件裁判的事实建构与法律发现诸环节中,并在司法判案中有它特定的位置。司法前见、一般推理、事实解释、图式加工、事实剪裁、经验参与、结果导向、观念辐射等都是对司法隐性知识的艰难表述。连接隐性知识与既定法律规范依赖于法律修辞,裁判凭藉判决修辞而获得形式正当性并为公众更好地接受。现代诉讼程序规则是激励与规制司法隐性知识运用的制度环境,司法隐性知识的研究对当前我国大陆法治文化建设具有特别重要的启示意义。     

On Foreign Ground: Grand Narratives,Situated Specificities,and the Praxis of Critical Theory and Law

This article is the first part of a two-part project which is critical of trends in contemporary U.S. critical and interdisciplinary legal scholarship and pedagogy. The larger project seeks to use this critique to model fruitful approaches to critical and theoretical scholarship in law “beyond 2000”.The focus of this article’s criticism is the work of two significant scholars of the second wave of what might broadly be called CLS scholarship, or more precisely critical, theoretical and interdisciplinary legal scholarship: Jack Balk in and Pierre Schlag. Looking back to the work of Duncan Kennedy and Stanley Fish, respectively progenitors of CLS and of theoretical interdisciplinary legal scholarship in the U.S., it is argued that the work of all four is marked by two significant flaws: lack of self-reflexivity and a desire for a realm of theory which unselfconsciously adopts the Cartesian split subject. The article then uses the work of Vicki Kirby and Pierre Bourdieu both to identify the tendencies it critiques, and to suggest why the work of Terry Threadgold and Peter Goodrich might provide models for a praxis of critical theory in law which is of particular use in the context of professional subject formation. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.