Determining the Externalities

The gravitas of the readings was concerned with the dichotomy of method versus object of criticism. It seemed that the suggestive role of a critic, especially in rhetorical criticism, is to mediate between the application of models of criticism and scratching the historical, social, and political veneers off the rhetorical artifacts. Additionally, it appeared that the ways models are being conceived as external to the artifact, except for what Farrell’s mentions “the didactic model of criticism,” there is an overt tendency to situate rhetorical frameworks as derivatives of the communicative studies seemingly speech and psychology and their theories.

To turn to Farrell, he intuits that models can be drawn from the “phenomenon in question,” but for rhetorical criticism he posits that “it would be nice if the model came from some field amicable to communication” (302). As a result, his discussion on symptom criticism and thematic criticism is largely hinged on abstracting constitutive features of communication theories albeit without a detailed descriptions of what possible frameworks could be rhetorically contributive. It is interesting in this sense to note how the idea of critical rhetorical models are more influenced by the derivative features from a shared discipline and less by a more intrinsic, neo-classical constructs. On the other hand, the didactic model subsumes the neo-Aristotelian principle of anti-subjectivity as Farrell concludes, “These ideas [the attributive features of communication] can no more be reduced to the artist’s intentions than they can be reduced to a limited audience’s coded response” (313). How then is it truly possible for a didactic critic to assay the “emergents” without broadening the objective function of the criticism? Why aestheticism is subordinated to the structure of the composition of the artifact in the didactic model when the rhetor’s persona and voice set the tone of the discourse?

Again, in Campbell there is a strong insistence on viewing the critical act as functions of operative constructs, or what Richard E. Young describes as “an eye to see with.” According to Campbell then, this eye is essentially the subjective eye of the critic which sees through the differentiated visions—reflexive, cognitive, dialectical, and evaluative (5). To me this is less than a model because these typologies are less differentiated than the models proposed by Farrell; also, the paradigm shift, as Kuhn would define it “replacement of one conceptual model by another,” is less obvious than any overt conception of models. Here as the critic internalizes the “recreative” and the “appreciative” (6) mode, she is no longer detached from the object of criticism, but she moves through these pervious critical modes that Campbell labels as subjective. Thus, in her article, there is a negative detachment between the object of criticism and the critic, unlike Farrell’s. For her, critical act occurs by reconciling the Cartesian split of the observer and the participant. However, even in this supposition, the author primes her theory with communicative studies and exerts that criticism (rhetorical) “should be autonomous, independent of the theory, methods, and criteria of other disciplines […]” (12). It makes me wonder if this intellectual recluse is ultimately helpful, let alone possible (since modern critical response cannot ignore the roles of cognitive and perceptual psychology). Does not this view stand in direct antithesis to Habermas’ call for communicative action, i.e. creating interpretive and emancipatory channels of communications by building knowledge through subjective and inter-subjective forces and sharing it across disciplines?

Talking about externalities, Black’s notion of “clusters of opinion” suggest innovative ways of appraising a rhetorical artifact. To him, “The rhetorical critic requires a method of analysis that enables him to connect the convictions that people have with the discourses that they hear and read” (169). This obviates the here-and-now imperative in a critical act. Following this requirement, I have identified the clusters of opinions (the symptoms and discursive constituents) in The Clash of Civilization. To begin with, Huntington borrowed his title from an article by Bernard Lewis, The Roots of Muslim Rage published in September 1990 issue of the Atlantic Monthly. Huntington prima facie gathers his choicest cluster from Lewis’s highly partisan ideologue, best described by invidious signifiers like “Western models”, “revulsion against America” “Western civilization,” “anti-Westernism,” “anti-Americanism,” against “House of Islam,” “Muslim dissidents,” “Muslim hostility,” “Muslim possessions”, “Muslim masses,” so on and so forth. As such, one may find verbal resurrections of these types of interventionist suggestions and aggressive deliberations throughout Huntington’s essay creating a straw man for the “us” versus “them” argument. One may also identify traces of variegated clusters of opinions in the essay derived from the works of Francis Fukuyama (End of History), Paul Kennedy, Robert Kaplan, and Benjamin Barber (Jihad versus McWorld). Thus, it can be said that for Huntington, these clusters of opinions act as surrogates to his ideological thesis