You Almost Had Me, Gaonkar

In “Rhetoric and Its Double,” Gaonkar argues convincingly for the importance of not just the rhetorical turn, but the implicit rhetorical turn. I tend to agree with Gaonkar that the implicit turn is not only more interesting than its explicit counterpart, but probably has more potential for invigorating academic discourse as well. However, I believe in establishing his arguments, Gaonkar failed to fully consider important counterarguments – most significantly, the view that rhetoric does indeed serve an epistemic function. Furthermore, Gaonkar’s conclusion provides few suggestions for fruitfully studying rhetoric in the future.

In order to praise the implicit turn toward the rhetorical in academia, Gaonkar first must establish that rhetoric has no subject matter of its own – that it is a mere supplement to knowledge. The author conducts a perfunctory review of Aristotle and Burke in order but never considers rhetoricians who have dealt with the topic more directly. For instance, Robert L. Scott’s (1967) “On Viewing Rhetoric As Epistemic,” which is an assigned reading for February 15th, effectively argues that “rhetoric may be viewed not as a matter of giving effectiveness to truth, but of creating truth” (p 10). Scott champions the epistemic function of rhetoric by claiming that through speaking and acting, we come to know. Other rhetoricians to successfully defend this position include Barry Brummett and Thomas Farrell.

Even if we look past Gaonkar’s error here, it seems to me that a focus on the implicit turn could be rather debilitating. Basically, those who have contributed to the implicit turn toward rhetoric have had little or no training, background, or even explicit interest in the study of rhetoric. If we follow Gaonkar’s logic, it seems as though it would be counterproductive for rhetoricians to attempt to tease out the implications of this turn. Wouldn’t we just miss the point like those other “rhetoricians” that Gaonkar counts among scholars of the explicit turn? Gaonkar provides such little hope that those scholars more explicitly concerned with rhetoric could ever make a difference, that it seems to discourage honest, worthwhile attempts at understanding the use of symbols in our (rhetorically constructed) worlds. I think it is important to avoid such conclusions, especially when one considers Gaonkar’s ill treatment of rhetoric as epistemic on the way to reaching his conclusions.