We’ll talk more about Bogost next week, after you have completed Project 2. In today’s class, you’ll take a quiz that will highlight some key terms. But I wanted to take a minute to explicate what I see as a problem with Bogost’s treatment of rhetoric, and, consequently, his framing of procedural rhetoric. This isn’t a “problem” in the sense of “Bogost’s theory doesn’t work.” In fact, I think he provides us with a valuable way of seeing (as Burke would call it) procedural arguments. Rather, because he defines rhetoric according to a logocentric Aristotelian tradition, and pays too little attention to Burke’s concept of identification, he misses an opportunity to address a wider scope of rhetorical effects than simply “to change opinion or action” (29).
Briefly, I would reduce the debates Bogost traces regarding rhetoric (and especially visual rhetoric) to a discussion as to whether rhetoric has to advance arguments. Bogost reads classical rhetoric as built on the back of dialectic and argument (via Aristotle’s response to Socrates’ and Plato’s condemnation). Contemporary rhetoric, he argues, is more invested in style. He writes:
In contemporary rhetoric, the goal of persuasion is largely underplayed or even omitted as a defining feature of the field, replaced by the more general notion of elegance, clarity, and creativity in communication. (20)
Let me go on record as saying he is half right. Contemporary rhetoric isn’t always concerned with persuasion (though much of it still is). But the second half of that sentence makes me want to pull my hair out. To be fair, Bogost isn’t a rhetorician by trade–his work lies at the intersections of philosophy and technology, and I would excuse him a bit if he is not completely familiar with the nuances of another field. But I get the sense, especially from his cursory review of Burke, that reviewers likely suggested that there is more depth to contemporary rhetorical studies than he acknowledges.
So, if contemporary rhetoric isn’t concerned about persuasion or style, then what is it’s concern? I would argue that rhetoric, inspired by Burke and 20th century philosophy/theory (a number of kinds here: phenomenology, continental, postmodern, poststructuralist, feminist, postcolonial, critical, etc.), has taken the process of identification as its central concern. Full disclosure: my work takes identification as its central concern (though I refer to it as “ethics”) and I consider myself a contemporary rhetorician. But I do not think I am alone in this endeavor by any stretch of the imagination.
Let’s look at Bogost’s discussion of Burke:
The influential twentieth-century rhetorician Kenneth Burke marks an important change in the understanding of rhetoric. Because people are inherently separate from one another, we seek ways to join our interests. Burke identifies this need as the ancestor of the practice of rhetoric. He extends rhetoric beyond persuasion, instead suggesting “identification” as a key term for the practice. We use symbol systems, such as language, as a way to achieve this identification. Burke defines rhetoric as a part of the practice of identification, as “the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or induce actions in other human agents.” While rhetoric still entails persuasion for Burke, he greatly expands its purview, arguing that it facilitates human action in general. Persuasion is subordinated to identification […] and using rhetoric to achieve an end is only one possible use of the craft for Burke. Rhetoric becomes a means to facilitate identification and to “bridge the conditions of estrangement that are natural and inevitable.” (20-21)
This is an admirable summary of Burke’s work–though I will argue it underplays some of the more radical dimensions of Burke’s rhetoric. First, though, I would suggest that the “other ends of rhetoric” suggested by Burke disappear from Bogost’s book after this paragraph. A few pages later, (procedural) rhetoric is summarized thusly:
Following the classical model, procedural rhetoric entails persuasion–to change the opinion or action. Following the contemporary model, procedural rhetoric entails expression–to convey ideas effectively. (29).
Notice how identification has disappeared.
What I would emphasize is that Burke’s concept of identification isn’t necessarily a conscious product of authorial intent or agency. Burke, influenced by psychoanalysis, Marxism, and phenomenology was interested in the unconscious (his work anticipates Zizek’s sociological reading of Lacan). Rhetoric becomes the study of how a collective group of individuals becomes a “we.” Without a prior sense of a “we” (such that persuasion isn’t subordinated to identification as much as identification is prior to persuasion), there can be no exchange dialectical or otherwise. And, in the wake of the holocaust, Burke’s work was particularly attuned to the ways in which any creation of an “us” by necessity operates by engendering a “them.” Identification is impossible without its counterpart, division. Burke’s rhetoric is an attempt to attend to this process It is not necessarily an attempt to stop the process (for Burke it is indispensable), but an effort to create increasingly inclusive senses of “us” and to minimize the violence identification wrecks upon “them.” This for me is “ethics” in its most basic sense.
Again, my point here isn’t to bash Bogost or his concept of procedural rhetoric. As we will see in the coming weeks, I find both to be interesting, innovative, and useful. But I do want to highlight his rather impoverished sense of contemporary rhetoric, and to suggest that we can better understand procedural rhetoric once we attend to how videogames always operate by placing us within particular identities (particular senses of “us”). This, I believe, compliments Bogost’s discussion of videogames and ideology (3, 71-79).
Reading Notes/Quotes
Traditional take on classical rhetoric (17-19).
Problems with Visual / Digital rhetoric (21-28; 34-35).
Procedural rhetoric isn’t about “content” but “processes”; distinction between procedural rhetoric and serious games (48, 54-59)
Example of an enthymeme as a truncated syllogism (36). Bogost makes a direct connection between the enthymeme, interactivity, and procedural rhetoric (43).
“This is really what we do when we play videogames: we explore the possibility space its rules afford by manipulating the game’s controls” (42-43). Games like SuperBetter or sf0 attempt to refashion the real world with the expanded “possibility space” we afford game worlds: making it easier to experiment with new ways of operating or interacting with reality.
For videogames as artistic expression meets interesting choices, see 45.
Key to understanding Bogost’s definition of rhetoric is how he differentiates himself from Fogg: 60-61. Compare to his discussion of the processes that interest him (5).
