Revisiting Richard Mckeon's Architectonic Rhetoric: a Response

University of Iowa From the SelectedWorks of David J Depew 2010 Revisiting Richard McKeon’s Architectonic Rhetoric: A Response to ‘The sU es of "Rhetoric in a Technological Age: Architectonic Productive Arts’ David J Depew, University of Iowa Available at: https://works.bepress.com/david_depew/51/ Reengaging the Prospects of Rhetoric Current Conversations and Contemporary Challenges Edited by Mark J. Porrovecchio I~ ~~o~:!;;n~~:up 2(11) NEW YORK AND LONDON 36 Barbara A. Biesecker Chapter 3 47. "Barack Obama's Acceptance ~peech," N May L All the following citations are froIl! this transcript. Revisiting Richard McKeon's "The President as Sign," in The Republic of Signs: Liberal and American Popular ClIlture University of Chicago Architectonic Rhetoric 87-121. "no" that, in refllsing to elaborate itself into sense as A Response to Richard McKeon's "The nation, or program for action functions as an empty or signifier (a signifier that thereby does not submit to Uses of Rhetoric in a Technological Age: whose perlocutionary force is to traumatize the Copjec, Imagine; !v1aoti, "The Performative"; Architectonic Productive Arts" Rubenstein, rhis is Not. 50. Alain Sadiou, "Philosophical Considerations of Some Recent Facts," David Depew trans. Steven Corcoran, Theory and Euent 6 (2002): 2. This, again, marks Sadiou's disavowal (in its stricrest Freudian sense of deliherate not-flo tic of his own theoretical militancy in the midst of a critique of militant terrorism, 51. Borch-Jacobsen, Llcan, 137. As Borch-Jacobsen rightly notes, "This is Like several other essays that Richard McKeon wrote in the late 19605 also why Lacan always formulates his examples of fllll speech in the sec and early 1970s, "The Uses of Rhetoric ill a Technological Age: Archi ond person singular (which, strictly speaking, is nor at all necessary, since tectonic Productive Arts" argues that the times call for rhetoric to one most often gives one's word in the first person), "This YOll," he "is become an architectoniC productive art, as McKeon says it did Oil two ahsolutely essemial in full speech, What Lacan llleans to emphasize is the necessary co-relation or co-respondence between the you and the I, the earlier occasions: Rome as it l110rphed from republic to empire and the latter insri!llting its idenrity only hy investing the former with the power of Renaissance as it tried to overcome the constraints of what it effectively responding (or not)" [137], My argument that Lacan's conceptualization and dismissivdy constructed as "the Middle Ages," [will try to say what of full speech is rhetorical through and through is lent additional support McKeon took an architectonic productive art to be, what these earlier this unequivocal assertion (presented as a single-line paragraph, which eras had in common with his, and why McKeon thought that his time, virtue of its very form signals its significance) in Ecnts: "For the fum: tion of language in speech is nor to unlike its previous analogues, ca lied for an architectonic rhetoric that 52, See Ernesro Laelau and Chantal would take upon itself the offices of first philosophy, replacing meta Towards a Radical DemOCrLllic l J o/ltics, trans, Winston Moore and physics, I [ say "his time" intentionally, A lot of water has flowed under Camlllack (BllfY St. Edmunds, UK: Tbetford Press, IY~S), Insofar the hriclge in the last four decades. So [ will go on to reflect on as Laelan cominues to think democracy as "ever-receding horizon," the time has hrought forth what McKeon called for and whether his call cominued influence of Heidegger makes itself felt. To sharpen the distinc tion between Laelau's thinking on democracy and my own, is to sav that remains timely an evemal rhetoric perlocutionary effect (what it docs hy the I begin with some reflections on the genre of this text. The speaker in is to discursively evacuate or empty the place of Power hy giving it this and many other McKeon texts is not an "I" but a channel through to the people nor in the form of all earnest answer to the Real-however which some sort of "we" does the talking. This voice is fond of passive progressive, radical, or evell utopian-hut in the form of the (ter constructions and seems allergic to emotional appeals. One might be rifying) open qHestion (Che vl/oi?) that renders its receivers as the answer to the Real. This theorization of evemal rhetoric thereby articulates in tempted to infer that this was simply characteristic of the man himself. interesting ways with Claude Lefort's formula of democracy: "('ower is In an earlier essay on McKeon, I noted the near disappearance of the and remains democratic lonly] when it proves to belong to no one," Claude first person even in a that purported to be autobiographical!l Yet Democracy and Political Theory (Minneapolis: University of Min rereading "The Uses of Rhetoric" from a distance of almost forty yeus nesota Press, 1988),27, I have been struck by its tone of urgency. The intellectual history that 53. Jacques-Alain Miller, te Neueu de Lacan (Paris: Verdier, 270, Cited in Slavoj Zizek, In Defense oftost Causes, 41~, warrants its call for a post-metaphysical architectonic rhetoric is not 54, fcrits.265, overtly founded, to be sure, in what to be done to resolve a par ticular issue that has presented itself to a well-identified here and now, as it would be in a straightforward piece of deliberative rhetoric. We forced to follow subtle clues in reconstructing what was bugging Richard McKeon in the 1960s and 19705. Still, this is indeed a piece of deliberative rhetoric. Admittedly, the text's tendency to move directly 38 David Depew Revisiting Richard McKeon'S Architectonic Rhetoric 39 from history to call without pausing to identify a specific problem that paradigm arts. Does that mean that doctors, lawmakers, generals, and licenses the speaker to issue a concrete solution picks up some overtones public speakers are practicing architectonic arts? These arts are cer of the decidedly modern genre of the manifesto. In manifestos paramount in the technical sphere itself. The art of bridle mak is portrayed as already bringing forth a solution that the speaker, ing, Aristotle says, is subordinate to horsemanship and horsemanship to construed as a sign reader, is merely channeling. In McKeon's military strategy." But as we climb up from this and similar sequences however, it is people not history that are called upon to do what is into the sphere of normative action (praxis), Aristotle says that politics for and who might well fail to do it. (po!itike) is architectonic over military strategy, lawmaking, medicine, McKeon's call for rhetoric to be an architectonic productive art works and rhetoric.' McKeon interprets this to mean that politics, since it plays against the background of Aristotle's influential distinction between an architectonic role in the sequence that rllns from bridle making to scientific knowledge of invariant essences (episti?Jni> in the sphere of horsemanship to military strategy, is in this respect not only an art, but the()ria), practical knowledge of how to behave on particular occasions an architectonic art, albeit an art that springs from and responds to the without compromising ethical values (fJhronesis in the sphere of praxis), ethical norms of praxis. and technical knowledge, which issues in products, procedures, or poli This is a possihle, but problematic interpretation of Aristotle.6 Even cies that reliably achieve their aim because they come abollt not by acci more problematic, but consistent with this reading, is McKeon's parallel dent or rote training, but through "how to" knowledge of causes claim that for Aristotle metaphysics, the highest of the purely theoretical in the sphere of poiesis). The standard translation of teclme as "art" sciences (e{Jistemai), can also serve as an architectonic art, albeit one can be misleading. Even though he uses it, McKeon might well have that looks to and proceeds from theoretical knowledge. His argument pointed out that the narrowing of "art" to mean "fine art" is a legacy of is as follows. Aristotle clearly says that it is the {)()/itikos or statesman the Renaissance. Accordingly, we must hear in mind that for Aristotle who determines which arts and sciences are to be practiced in the st<lfe, art names an intellectual virtue, an achievement so deeply founded in by whom, and to what extent. But in so decidll1g, McKeon infers, the knowledge of causes that much of what we today call science Aristotle /Jo!itikos must consult the metaphysician to learn how to "organize sci would have identified as techne. ences according to the principles, subject matters, and methods lof thel Within this frame, McKeon wants to redeploy Aristotle's distinction theoretic, practical, and productive sciences." This makes the consulting between architectonic and subordinate arts. House roofers and dry wall metaphysician the practitioner of an architectonic art.~ installers are subordinate artists. An architect is, paradigmatically, an Whether this is even a possible interpretation of Aristotle might architectonic one. The former achieve their ends only if they are under he worth going into, but on another occasion.'; I mention it here only the direction of the latter, For this very reason, Aristorle argues that as because it explains why McKeon claims that in tbe later twentieth cen one goes down this hierarchy agency is reduced.) A nurse is less active tury we needed rhetoric to become not simply architectonic, hut an archi than a physician. An amhulance chaser is less active than a partner in tectonic productive art. The addition of "productive" would he otiose to a law firm with oak paneled offices.

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