Narcissism and the Literary Libido. Marshall W. Alcorn Jr.
discussing Lacan’s interest in style, suggests that “the object of psychoanalytic study reveals itself as style.”18Style, in this case, reflects the manner in which content of any sort is appropriated by the symptoms of subjectivity.
The self has a relatively stable self-structure, and therefore a recognizable style. Rhetoricians frequently describe and analyze this property in linguistic structures produced by writers. Style is important not simply because it is a distinctive property of selves; it is important because it describes a linguistic site where self-structure, engaging social discourse, produces rhetoric. Rhetoricians examine how the style of the self is “characteristically” carried forward (consciously and unconsciously) into language to achieve rhetorical effects. Terry Eagleton emphasizes that much of Frederic Jameson’s rhetorical force derives from his personal rhetorical style. “Jameson,” he observes, “composes rather than writes his texts, and his prose . . . carries an intense libidinal charge, a burnished elegance and unruffled poise, which allows him to sustain a rhetorical lucidity through the most tortuous, intractable materials.”19Although it expresses the “subjectivity” of the writer, style composes also the “subject” of sentences, and at least momentarily (and, when effective, more than momentarily), a unique subjectivity within the reader.
Other facets of rhetorical study imply a similar co-responsive relationship between self-structure and rhetorical language. Because selves respond to rhetorical discourse in complicated patterns of pleasure, censorship, attention, and belief, rhetorical activity attempts to control and direct these complex interwoven patterns of response. When speakers prepare speeches, for example, they typically seek to learn the attitudes, feelings, and values of their audience in order to promote certain intended rhetorical effects. Audiences, rhetoricians argue, can be most easily moved when they are flattered by a speaker who seems to promote their own values. Flattery is not a mere ornamental device. As Burke argues, “Persuasion by flattery is but a special case of persuasion in general.”20 This assumption indicates something important about rhetorical transactions: Rhetorical structures work best when they “fit into” or “work on” psychological structures already in place.
The beliefs of an audience are important to know because we assume that the self, as a result of deeply held beliefs, can resist rhetorical manipulation. Real people, unlike the passive creatures often conceived by structuralist theory, are not easily “subjected” to rhetorical effects of language. Real people resist that which they sense to be “rhetoric.” The self seems to have a relatively stable structure that identifies with particular feelings and ideas in a predictable way, so it actively resists other opposing feelings and ideas. Rhetoricians acknowledge this fact and seek to develop rhetorical strategies that can overcome resistance.
Human value and belief—character itself—are not easily changed because of self-structure. Self-structure reflects those organizations of libidinal investment and libidinal control that define subjectivity. These organizations are durable and not easily changed. Rhetoricians, however, believe effectively planned discourse can overcome the resistance these systems have to rhetoric. When resistance is overcome, the stability of human character is an ally rather than an enemy to rhetoric.
Consider for a moment how the temporal stability of the self contributes to rhetorical effects. It seems clear that rhetoric can work—that it can have practical effects on the ways people act and behave. But what makes these effects possible? How does mere language have lasting effects on a biological organism? It must be the case that effective rhetoric is something like self-structure itself. It is not a mere collection of words and voices, not a passive structure of language; rhetoric—like self-structure—manipulates the properties of linguistic form that organize (articulate the emotional and linguistic components of) the self. Both structures, rhetoric and the self, actively employ language to organize human feeling and behavior.
Rhetorical form “works” when it operates psychological mechanisms that inform self-structure. More importantly, rhetorical form can work only when its effect survives the temporal moment of language exposure, is preserved in certain components of self-structure, and is carried forward temporally into some larger horizon of thought and planning.
For most people, human experience is not like an afternoon at the circus, a dizzy disorganized collection of momentary rides, that once ridden, are immediately left behind. Some principle organizes and focuses human experience. Self-structure is precisely such a principle. It gives meaning, focus, and organization to diverse segments of human experience. Effective rhetoric, in a similar manner, makes use of this same principle of focus and organization. Effective rhetorical transactions, like strongly remembered experiences, stand out as an ordering center for an otherwise less impressive collection of dispersed impressions. They draw disorganized elements of memory and emotion into their patterned structure. Admittedly, people are often only momentarily moved by rhetoric. But people can be affected in ways that move them to vote or act in conformity with rhetorical aims at moments much later than the time of the rhetorical experience. Effective rhetoric is not a momentary and quickly emptied thing, and this fact requires more theoretical attention. Through language, such rhetoric taps the energy that organizes self-structure. It can radically and lastingly change people’s attitudes because, much like strong experience itself, it makes use of language to build self-structure.
All these observations lead me to a simple generalization important to describing relationships between rhetoric and self-structure. There is a sense in which people change and a there is a sense in which people do not change. This assumption is essential for rhetorical theory. The self is stable enough to resist change and changeable enough to admit to rhetorical manipulation, but not so changeable as to be in constant chameleonlike response to each and every social force. Rhetoric therefore needs a theory of the self that is sufficiently complex to conceptualize these features. A theory of rhetoric needs an understanding of the self that appreciates the relative stability and instability of self-structure.
Implications
I have argued that the self has a relatively stable self-structure. I have also argued that self-structure is given particular shape by historical processes. These claims have implications for an understanding of the nature of ethos. Let me now make these implications more explicit.
A “modern” self differs from the Aristotelian self, and, because of this, an Aristotelian ethos differs from a modern ethos. Let me be more emphatic: It is not simply that Greeks and moderns have different selves, but that the larger structure of ethos—the particular mechanisms governing how personality can itself be persuasive—is quite different in the two models.
Aristotle’s ideas are not outdated, but they are restrictive. These ideas were formulated within a particular social and psychological moment. The Greek self, Greek culture, and Greek rhetoric are interactive units that function differently than the modern self, modern culture, and modern rhetoric. Clifford Geertz argues that the human animal is an incomplete thing that finds its completion only in culture.21 We should assume that different cultures “complete” selves in different ways, and provide different structures for rhetorical interaction.
To understand the form of modern ethos (though it is difficult to give “modern” a specific date) we must first, following the implications of Rorty’s argument, consider the particular nature of modern culture in its relation to the modern self and modern rhetoric. How does modern culture give form and direction to both self-structure and self-activity?
An important aspect of modern culture is its prodigious diversity, plurality, and multiplicity. This cultural diversity is not simply something “outside” us. It is part of us, part of our consciousness. Geertz argues that “the hallmark of modern consciousness ... is its enormous multiplicity.”22 Geertz points out that in premodern societies human actions are governed by “primordial attachments” defined by blood, race, language, region,