A Rhetoric of Responsibility, Diane Davis

1. Introduction
• Kenneth Burke: belonging is rhetorical
• ontology - the study of what it is to exist
• belonging is not shared existence, belonging is rhetorical identification
• ways to define belonging are symbolic: blood, native soil, cultural history
• even though they are symbolic, they are defined as a condition for belonging
• these rhetoric symbols operate retroactively but are not a pre-existing feature of the individual and do not create the essence of a community
• a débordement - overflowing, oblivious to borders
• commonality is overflowing and it preceeds and exceeds any prerequisite for belonging
• persuasion occurs without cognitive scrutiny, for example, tapping your foot to a tune
• rhetoric goes beyond epistemology
• epistemology - the theory of knowledge
• beyond persuasion, rhetoric should study affectability, persuadability, and responsivity
• communication does not create community -- it is dependent on sharing and response-ability
• hermeneutics - the study of interpretation
• rhetoric cannot be separated from hermeneutics
• Walter Jost, Michael Hyde: rhetoric is other-orientated
• rhetoric is celebrated for its capacity to create cohesive social bonds
• or glass half-empty: rhetoric creates scapegoat, rhetoric creates congregation by means of segregation
• polemic - a forceful attack to defend or oppose an idea, belief, or person
• for rhetorical practices to have an effect, there must already exist an openness to affection by the other
2. Being-With
• Jean-Luc Nancy: "One cannot make the world with simple atoms. There has to be a clinamen."
• clinamen - bias, or literally, the unpredictable swerve of atoms
• community is the clinamen, the bias, of the individual
• Mitsein - the characteristic of humans always being with humans, literally "Being-With"
• Dasein - human existence, literally "Being-There"
• there is no dasein without mitsein -- there is no being there without being with -- there is no human existence without being with humans
• Mit-da-sein is therefore a portmanteau
• "I" is really "we" -- consider for self vs. other
• "with" suggests inside or outside, but its more like a Klein jar or mobious strip
• Klein jar - a jar with no inside or outside, mobius strip - a surface with one side
• according to Nancy, community or fraternity is not a shared essence but sharing itself
• according to Nancy, singularity occurs at a point of exposure, the limit where there is both inside and outside and neither inside nor outside (... limit as in calculus)
• in physics, singularity is an anomoly that escapes all the laws of physics
• Nancy's singularity is observable
• infinity is inherent in finitude
• absolute limit - a boundary without an outside
• communication is exposition and compearance (the appearance between you and I)
• communication is not the transfer of messages or the desire for consensus or recognition
• Nancy's formula for compearance: you shares me
• community consists in this communication
• community is not the work of singular beings -- one does not produce it, one experiences or is constituted by it
• community is an experience that makes us be
• Nancy: "we must expose ourselves to what has gone unheard in community"
• community is a gift and a task -- a gift to be renewed and communicated, not a work to be done or produced
• "writing, no matter what it says, testifies to exposedness, to vulnerability--to responsivity"
• you don't write for community, you write for communal sensibility -- instead of Being-With it should be Being-For
3. Being-For
• singularities are like passengers on the same train car -- seated next to each other in an accidental and arbitrary manner
• train passengers are somewhere between "crowd" and "group"
• train passengers are "being-with" -- a relation without relation -- exposed but not linked
• passengers are faced with the choice of viewing each other as strangers or neighbors
• "Indifference is the luxury of exposed existents who are not faced with the fact of their exposedness."
• community in the social feeling sense does not form around a common essence or goal, but instead by the death of its members
• ekstasis - to stand outside of, or to transcend, oneself
• "my finitude can only communicate to myself through your death"
• the purpose of community is to shove you out of yourself, to make you responsive and responsible to others
• "The encounter with the face comes shrink-wrapped, in other words, with an obligation to respond, after which ignoring the other becomes a conscious effort."
• feigning absorption in your phone, etc, is a response
• face is not the front of the head, face is not routine figural operations
• face is not visible, or conceivable, or perceivable
• face is what cannot become content, which your thoughts would embrace
• when face to face, you experience the other's finiteness
• face is the site of "my" encounter with the inassimilable other
• face put me into relation with what I can neither appropriate nor abdicate
• possible face-to-face outcomes: refuse to respond, respond with hostility or violence, take the other out, miss the face, approach at an angle to harm or persuade
• once encountered, nonresponse is not an option
• face forces the scandal of obligation, where ego is compelled to respond, stripped of self-mastery and spontaneity
• generosity is not freely given but compelled
• communication is derived from self-coinciding
• inward dialogue is beholden to the solidarity that sustains it
• conversation cannot be witnessed by a third party
• the scramble to return to the original position is a false nostalgia
• face to face causes the entrapment of I
• being-hostage is the condition created by being-with
• being-hostage is human fraternity itself
• responsibility is a clinamen -- the inclination toward the other
• face is a pure appeal, pursuasion without a rhetorician
• without obligation, without being-hostage, there would be no generosity, no compassion, no pardon, no proximity
• "after you" is the only way to get from being-with to being-for
• rhetoric is first philosophy
4. Methodology
• goal: expose a preoriginary rhetoricity
• writing and speaking are functions of inessential solidarity
• solidarity is exposed in any address