I had planned on doing an episode on the campus protests that were going on all over the nation, and really all over the world. I was going to talk about how the politics of all of this were more complicated than they appear on the surface. I mean, right wing radio was openly talking about how they are excited about the possibility of universities just shutting down completely because of all of this. So if you think this is anything other than a sustained attack on higher ed, you are, to be quite frank, wildly naïve. There is a concerted effort by one side of the political spectrum to keep people ignorant. That’s probably because if you put any real thought into their policies, you’d immediately realize they are nonsense. Hence, the culture wars.
But to be honest, I don’t know that I have the emotional capacity for that right now. I finished grades a while ago, and that takes a lot out of me, I have administrative duties, which is tedious and tiring, and I am working on these things in small snatches between meetings with students and household things, so I just didn’t think I had it in me to address something so near and dear to me.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t address IMPORTANT things.
So, here’s a silly thing to know about my little family – we are an indoors people.
Honestly, the idea of camping just horrifies us.
We have friends who love to get out in the woods and get back to nature when they have a spare weekend, and that is pretty much the opposite of what the Thorpes are into.
When we go on vacation, we like to go to a city, sample the cuisine, see the historical landmarks, and visit museums.
We do not now, nor do we ever want to “get back into nature.” Nature is dirty and it bites and stings.
Now, I do see the appeal of a writing retreat. I get the desire to hole up in a cabin in the woods or the painted desert and write for a few days. But that’s the difference – I want to isolate in nature to get some work done. When I have leisure time, I want to partake in all that culture and society have to offer. And even if I were on a writing retreat, it would have to be somewhere with wifi.
HOWEVER.
I recognize, I mean really, truly recognize that it is absolutely essential that we do what we can to preserve the natural world. The Thorpes are 100% on board with conservation. We just, you know, don’t want to live in it.
The thing is, the environmental crisis we are facing isn’t just an afterthought. This is THE existential crisis of our time. I can bemoan the state of education or race relations all day long, but the truth is, if our planet is uninhabitable in 50 years, none of that will matter.
Now, this may not seem immediately connected to what I do, but there is actually a growing field of environmental studies in rhetoric. I am not well-versed in it, but I know there are people who are making careers out of studying how we talk about the world we live in, and how we relate to it.
But before scientific rhetoric and environmental studies became a thing, rhetoricians were thinking about how we relate to the world in a number of ways.
George Kennedy wrote an article called “A Hoot in the Dark” a long time ago that made some ripples and I think it merits our attention.
I have to be honest here – I don’t like this article. I don’t buy the argument. However, just like in teaching, my job is not to only tell you about things I like or agree with. I figure my job is to introduce you to relevant ideas and let you sort them out for yourselves, if that’s what the situation warrants. And if we’re going to talk about rhetoric and the natural world, then Kennedy seems to be a reasonable place to start.
Kennedy’s argument is, in short, that rhetoric pre-dates speech. Kennedy argues that animals and humans share a deep and fundamental rhetoric that exists prior to language or speech. It is found in nature and exists in myriad species. We all, he claims, use a complex code, or system of signs, calls, and symbols.
The name of the article comes from observations of owls – And other animals, but the title refers to owls. Kennedy claims that animals, like owls, communicate with a system of signs that announce things like “don’t advance on my territory,” “I’m looking for a mate,” and “there is danger nearby.” There are any number of other things that animals communicate, but these are just some basics.
I am a cat-owner and grew up with dogs. And I will acknowledge that animals communicate. Dogs wag their tails or bare their teeth. Cats chatter or hiss. And a responsible pet owner will learn what each of those signals means and the best way to respond to them. I am completely convinced that my cat knows how to tell me what she wants. I guess I’m trained, as much as anything else. And it can be so specific, too! When my can hops up on the back of the couch and meows in a specific way, I know she wants me to grab the red blanket and lean back so she can curl up on top of me and let me pet her. This sounds demanding – but any cat owner will tell you I absolutely and dutifully do it every time.
Kennedy argues that this communication is rhetoric before speech. Animals have the ability to “make an argument,” or at least state a claim, just as much as any human does. My cat can very effectively tell me “Let me climb on you” or “pet me” or even “I need some water.” Kennedy’s argument is that this is rhetorical. That discourse exists in the natural world even without speech. He claims that an animal out in the wild, like an owl, crying out into the night that it has conquered its territory or claimed a meal, is rhetoric.
Now, some of this depends on what your definition of rhetoric is. If you like Burke’s definition of rhetoric, that it is a matter of identification, then this might not ring true. Owls don’t necessarily identify. That is a pretty human activity. And Burke’s description of “human” ( that we are symbol using and making creatures) indicates that. But if you like a more Aristotelian definition, does it make sense? There is a claim – is there support? And is there an assumption of a rational audience? Well, owls are speaking to other owls, presumably. Maybe their prey. And we can assume that owls are working under the presumption that other owls will work in their own self-interest, even if that is not a conscious thought. So is that a rational audience? My colleagues in economics are constantly trying to convince us it is.
But for Kennedy, rhetoric is the energy inherent in communication. It is the emotional energy that compels a speaker to speak or the physical energy you use to do so. It is the energy expended in coding and decoding the message. Rhetoric isn’t a claim or a structure – it is an animating force. And if that is the case, then it is only reasonable that it would be a part of all life, and not just human.
Rhetoric, then, according to Kennedy, is a tool for survival. It is part of the natural world that aids in our (and this includes our animal relatives) ability to thrive in a harsh, competitive environment. And, it has evolved over time. What started as Kennedy’s observed “hoot in the dark” has become sign, signifier, signified, or Derrida’s differance.
I bring this up in a discussion about the environment, because if you buy Kennedy’s article, then rhetoric and the natural world are inseparable. Rhetoric innervates the natural world and gives it direction. If Kennedy is correct, the rhetoric predates our very understanding of what meaning is. Rhetoric organizes and defines our environment. Because rhetoric is not an argument, it is the thing that our natural world uses to establish boundaries, hierarchies, and establish genealogies.
Some people love this argument, because it makes rhetoric central to life, the universe and everything. It also establishes a very close bond between us and the natural world because we share the same energy – the same “language” if you will, though it is really a non-language – with the environment around us. For some people this provides a lot of comfort – we are connected. We are part of a larger system. We are one with our environment.
This association with the natural world can be very empowering. It can be an inspiration to conserve, protect, and cherish the natural environment we live in, because we are all sharing in the same communicative energy.
Like I said – the argument doesn’t do much for me. But I know it moves a lot of others. And I’m willing to give it credit for that.
But this connection between rhetoric, or maybe just between us, and the natural world is an interesting thing for me to think about because I tend to separate myself from the natural world in a lot of ways. I don’t hike or camp. I don’t kayak. I really do prefer the great indoors, as Hugh Hefner put it.
I’ll continue to think in terms of Hef for a second, because I wrote part of my dissertation on Hef’s notion of “the great indoors” so I’m familiar. But the great indoors implies not just “cleanliness” or “protection,” but consumption.
If you’re inside you have to buy creature comforts – the chairs or couch to sit on, the music to listen to or the TV to watch or books to read, the table to put your glass on, and the liquid to fill your glass with! Inside is a world of consumption a lot of the time. And that puts me at odds with the natural world and conservation in many ways.
But, it is rhetoric that connects us all. And not even necessarily Kennedy’s pre-speech rhetoric. But rhetoric I can understand.
We are not going to make any advancement on the environmental front without policy changes. We can each individually recycle until the cows come home, or ride a bike to work on nice days, but ultimately our individual choices mean just about nothing because the VAST majority of environmental damage and pollution is done by just a few major corporations. And unless something is done to curb the massive amount of damage those singular organizations are doing, then nothing will change. And that is going to take international enforcement.
THIS is something I understand.
I may not necessarily get pre-language rhetoric. But I get policy.
If we are going to address the environmental crisis, and it is an existential threat, then we are going to have to get serious about policy.
And the biggest threat to policy is capitalism.
Ah, yes, that old chestnut.
The reason those corporations are allowed to wreak such havoc on the environment is because they turn a profit. We will let people get away with literal murder if they are making money.
And it’s so wild, because we don’t even think of this as a public good. We let people do terrible things for profit – so they can profit for themselves. If people or organizations were making gazillions of dollars and then we were taxing the crap out of them to recoup our losses it would be one thing, but we allow people and organizations to do irreparable harm to our society and our environment so they can PERSONALLY profit.
You get how this is, like, dumb, right?
We started with a discussion of how we are all connected through an innervating energy. There is a force that pre-dates languages that enlivens us and communicates our most fundamental ideas.
And we end up here, where our natural world is being ravaged so a few people can get richer while the rest of us burn.
That’s…a weird trajectory for a podcast.
But the thing is, that’s where capitalism gets us.
The free market is designed, or at least in its late stages it is, to let people milk the system for all its worth for their individual profit. And the way the system works, once you have a little bit of profit, it is easier to make more profit. Spend money to make money, and all that.
So the richest among us can afford to get richer. It also means they have the power and capability to extract resources from the earth to, you guessed it, make more profit.
The environmental crisis isn’t a matter of individuals making bad choices – it is the result of capitalism. It is what happens when greedy people are left unchecked. It is what happens when we don’t take policy seriously and let the proverbial market, which has never and never will be equal, decide the fate of the planet.
Because the thing about the market, is that it doesn’t give a damn about long term results or goods. Economists like to talk a big game about letting the market play itself out and it will right itself, but that just doesn’t happen. We have literally never seen that. Just ask Hoover. Or Bush.
The market is a ravenous beast. It eats us all up and serves us like an appetizer to the people who already have the most. And the natural world is just the leafy green bed upon which we are served. Capitalism doesn’t care about preservation. Capitalism cares about profit. And profit means burning through those natural resources. It’s a short-term gain. It’s like the zombiefied, reverse version of John Meynard Keynes.
So, yes – I admit to not being outdoorsy. But I also recognize what the actual problem is. I may not like camping. But that doesn’t mean I don’t value the woods. I think the woods are awesome and amazing and we need more of them. I just don’t want to sleep there.
More importantly, I realize that the way to make sure the woods, and my friends’ camping grounds, are protected, is to address capitalism. We have to get to the root cause. Canal clean up days are great. They beautify the community. I’m not saying we shouldn’t do those. But they don’t do anything to solve the problem.
In some ways, I kind of wish I did buy Kennedy’s argument. But ultimately, I just don’t like that definition of rhetoric. But here’s the thing – my problem with Kennedy is a rhetorical one, not an ideological one.
I am not a Creationist. But I do believe that there is something divine in all of us – maybe even in all life. I like the idea that there is a creative spark that animates us all and we share it with the natural world. I like the notion that there is an energy that moves us to communicate.
But I’m uncomfortable calling that rhetoric.
But, hey, maybe I could be convinced.
But because I like that idea, I am even more opposed to capitalistic oppression. Yes, we are all divine. Yes, life is all connected.
So why do we allow our lives to be ruled by a paradigm designed to squeeze the most out of us for no good reason other than to benefit someone else?
We, and our world, will die this way.
And that is where things like policy, and other definitions of rhetoric, have to step in.
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