View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Open Access Dissertations 2-2013 Critical Rhetoric in the Age of Neuroscience Brett nI gram University of Massachusetts Amherst, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations Part of the Communication Commons Recommended Citation Ingram, Brett, "Critical Rhetoric in the Age of Neuroscience" (2013). Open Access Dissertations. 690. https://doi.org/10.7275/181e-7p15 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations/690 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ! Critical Rhetoric in the Age of Neuroscience A Dissertation Presented by BRETT INGRAM Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 2013 Communication ! ! ! ! © Copyright by Brett Ingram 2013 All Rights Reserved ! ! ! Critical Rhetoric in the Age of Neuroscience A Dissertation Presented by BRETT INGRAM Approved as to style and content by: __________________________________________ Stephen Olbrys Gencarella, Chair __________________________________________ Briankle Chang, Member __________________________________________ Randall Knoper, Member _______________________________________ Lisa Henderson, Department Head Communication ! ! DEDICATION To my son, Jules ! ! ! ! ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Stephen Gencarella, who in addition to serving as my dissertation advisor has also played the roles of mentor, editor, therapist, comic foil, would-be assailant, big brother, and best friend, often in the course of a single evening. He and his family Winnie, Marcella, Sal, Gina, and Tony have become part of my own family. Profound thanks must also go to my parents, Daniel and Deborah, who provided much- needed emotional and financial support over the course of my graduate odyssey. I am proud and humbled to become the second Doctor Ingram. I would also like to extend my gratitude to the members of my committee, Randall Knoper and Briankle Chang, whose writing and teaching were inspirational. Without their insights and generative questions, this project would never have come to be. Additionally, I want to thank my friend Viveca Greene, who helped me jumpstart the writing process whenever it stalled. Finally, I thank Carmen, my loving partner and the mother of my forthcoming son, Jules. ! ! ! "! ! ! ABSTRACT CRITICAL RHETORIC IN THE AGE OF NEUROSCIENCE FEBRUARY 2013 BRETT INGRAM, B.A., SHIPPENSBURG UNIVERSITY M.A., NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Stephen Olbrys Gencarella Although there has been an outpouring of scholarship on the “rhetorical body” in the last two decades, nearly all analyzes and critiques discourses about the body. Very little work in contemporary rhetorical studies addresses the ways in which rhetoric affects and alters the central nervous system, and thereby exerts influence at a level of subjective experience prior to cognitive and linguistic apprehension. Recent neuroscientific research into affect, identity, and decision-making echoes many of the claims made by ancient rhetoricians: namely, that rhetorical activity is corporeally transformative, and that the material transformations wrought by rhetoric have profound implications for subjects’ capacity to engage in critical thought and agential judgment. This study demonstrates that emotional political rhetoric is physiologically addictive, that the brain and body can make decisions independently of the will of the thinking subject, and that symbolic violence can physically reconfigure the neural networks that make critical cognition possible. As public culture and discourse becomes increasingly imagistic, non-rational, and emotionally charged, critics must develop theoretical resources capable of recognizing and responding to new varieties of constitutive phenomena. Neuroscience can ! "#! ! supplement traditional rhetorical criticism by offering insight into the physiological processes by which destructive ideas become self-sustaining, and it can help critics devise more sophisticated rhetorical approaches to the task of promoting social healing. To advance this conversation, this dissertation outlines a critical neurorhetorical theory that is attuned to the Sophistic and Burkean rhetorical tradition, informed by contemporary neuroscience, and responsive to the unique cultural and social conditions of the 21 st century. ! ! "##! ! TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...................................................................................................v ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................vi CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................1 2. CRITICAL METHODOLOGY.............................................................................16 3. LITERATURE REVIEW......................................................................................23 4. POLITICAL JUNKIES: AFFECTIVE POLITICS AND ADDICTIVE RHETORIC............................................................................................................55 Affect and the Brain...............................................................................................59 Addictive Politics...................................................................................................66 The Drugs of Rhetoric...........................................................................................71 Burke on Addiction and Belief..............................................................................79 Rhetorical Recovery...............................................................................................84 5. VITAL SIGNS: CONSUBSTANTIALITY AND CORPOREAL RHETORIC 101 Agential Possession.............................................................................................105 The Internal Audience..........................................................................................112 New Vitalism and Critical Rhetoric.....................................................................124 6. AN UNCRITICAL CONDITION: RHETORICAL VIOLENCE AND “BRAIN TRAUMA”..........................................................................................................133 Symbolicity and Violence....................................................................................139 The Neuronal Subject..........................................................................................152 The Politics of Rhetorical Violence.....................................................................162 ! ! 7. OUTLINE FOR A CRITICAL NEURORHETORIC.........................................179 WORKS CITED..............................................................................................................189 !! ! ! CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION “Yes, we have a soul, but it is made up of many tiny robots”—Giulio Giorello, philosopher and neuroscientist In the last twenty years, several prominent rhetorical critics have argued for a more expansive role for the corporeal body and embodied experience in rhetorical theory, and others have made the case that rhetoric is best conceived as a mediatory art that synthesizes the symbolic and the material. 1 Yet with few exceptions, rhetoricians have thus far overlooked the brain as a site where the material and the symbolic intersect, despite an explosion of interest in the brain in other disciplines in the humanities. 2 Rhetorical scholars’ reticence on matters of the neurological is perhaps understandable. Given the field’s long colonization by departments of English and Communication, its struggle to define its borders and establish its disciplinary independence might be endangered if it was shown that rhetorical principles could be reduced to neurobiological functions. However, as Leslie Thiele notes in The Heart of Judgment: Practical Wisdom, Narrative, and Neuroscience , recent neuroscientific studies of the brain “do not lead in !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 Proponents of corporeal rhetoric include McKerrow (1998), Selzer and Crowley (1999), Condit (2000), Deluca and Harold (2005), Hawhee (2009). For theoretical work that emphasizes rhetoric as mediation between body and environment, see McGee (1982), Engnell (1998), Crable (2003), Gunn (2004). 2 Rhetorical scholars who have addressed the brain include Gregg (1984), Walker (1990), Arthos (2000), Pruchnic (2008). Scholars from other fields in the humanities who have written extensively about the brain include Daniel Lord Smail (History), Leslie Thiele (Political Studies), Elizabeth Wilson (Gender Studies), Daniel Dennett (Philosophy), John Searle (Philosophy), Catherine Malabou (Philosophy), Elizabeth Grosz (Philosophy), Mark Turner (Literary Studies), Barbara Herrnstein Smith (Cultural Studies), William E. Connolly (Cultural Studies), Denis Dutton (Art Theory). ! $! ! the direction of biological determinism or crass reductionism. Rather,