Letters to Power: Public Advocacy Without Public Intellectuals

208 Pages·2011·5.659 MB·English

by  Samuel McCormick

Letters to Power
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RDD
RHETORICANDDEMOCRATICDELIBERATION
edited by Cheryl Glenn and J. Michael Hogan
the Pennsylvania state University
Editorial Board:
Robert Asen (University of Wisconsin–Madison)
Debra Hawhee (The Pennsylvania State University)
Peter Levine (Tufts University)
Steven J. Mailloux (University of California, Irvine)
Krista Ratcliffe (Marquette University)
Karen Tracy (University of Colorado, Boulder)
Kirt Wilson (The Pennsylvania State University)
David Zarefsky (Northwestern University)
Rhetoric and Democratic Deliberation is a series of
groundbreaking monographs and edited volumes focusing
on the character and quality of public discourse in politics
and culture. It is sponsored by the Center for Democratic
Deliberation, an interdisciplinary center for research, teaching,
and outreach on issues of rhetoric, civic engagement,
and public deliberation.
Other books in the series:
Karen Tracy, Challenges of Ordinary Democracy:
A Case Study in Deliberation and Dissent
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Letters to Power
public advocacy without public intellectuals
samuel mccormick
The Pennsylvania State University Press | University Park, Pennsylvania
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McCormick, Samuel, 1978–
Letters to power: public advocacy without public
intellectuals / Samuel McCormick.
p. cm. — (Rhetoric and democratic
deliberation; 2)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary: “Discusses the role of the intellectual in public
life. Argues that the scarcity of public intellectuals among
today’s academics is a challenge to us to explore
alternative, more subtle forms of political intelligence.
Looks to ancient, medieval, and modern traditions of
learned advocacy”—Provided by publisher.
isbn 978-0-271-05073-7 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. Rhetoric—Political aspects.
2. Intellectuals—Political activity.
I. Title.
PN239.P64M33 2012
808—dc23
2011020734
Copyright © 2011 The Pennsylvania State University
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press,
University Park, PA 16802-1003
The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member
of the Association of American University Presses.
It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University
Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated
stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ANSI
Z39.48–1992.
This book is printed on Natures Natural, which contains
50% post-consumer waste.
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments | vii
1 minor political rhetoric, major western thinkers | 1
2 remaining concealed:
learned protest between stoicism and the state | 19
3 mirrors for the queen:
exemplary figures on the eve of civil war | 52
4 performative publicity:
the critique of private reason | 81
5 hidden behind the dash:
techniques of unrecognizability | 109
6 oppositional politics in the age of academia | 142
Notes | 171
Index | 191
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Acknowledgments
This project has benefited from many readers. David J. Depew, James
P. McDaniel, and John Durham Peters provided crucial encouragement at
its outset and invaluable feedback during its early stages of development.
Barbara A. Biesecker, Kristine L. Muñoz, Bruce E. Gronbeck, and Daniel M.
Gross waded through substantial portions of the work in progress. Dieter
J. Boxmann, Robin Patric Clair, Gerard A. Hauser, John Louis Lucaites, Feli-
cia D. Roberts, and Michael Vicaro commented on drafts of chapters along
the way. And audiences at the University of Iowa, Northwestern University,
and Purdue University helped me work through several difficult sections of
the manuscript.
Portions of this study appeared in early form as articles: part of chapter 2
as “In Defense of New Stoicism: Public Advocacy and Political Thought in the
Age of Nero” in Advances in the History of Rhetoric 14 (2011): 49–64; much of
chapter 3 as “Mirrors for the Queen: A Letter from Christine de Pizan on the
Eve of Civil War” in the Quarterly Journal of Speech 94, no. 3 (August 2008):
273–96; some of chapter 4 as “The Artistry of Obedience: From Kant to King-
ship” in Philosophy and Rhetoric 38, no. 4 (2005): 302–27; and sections of chapter
6 as “The Political Identity of the Philosopher: Resistance, Relative Power, and
the Endurance of Potential” in Philosophy and Rhetoric 42, no. 1 (2009): 71–91.
I am grateful to the editors of these journals for permission to use this material.
I also wish to thank to everyone at the Pennsylvania State University Press,
especially Kendra Boileau, Cheryl Glenn, J. Michael Hogan, Stephanie Lang,
Patricia A. Mitchell, Laura Reed-Morrisson, Nicholas Taylor, and Sanford
G. Thatcher; as well as my assistants at Purdue University—Adam Lerner,
Michael Maione, and Corey Palmer—for their diligent work on the index.
And I am particularly grateful to Robert Hariman, whose invaluable feedback
on the entire manuscript saved me from a variety of pitfalls.
As always, though, my greatest debt is to my wife, Heather June Gibbons,
without whose patience (and impatience) this project never would have
found completion.
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1
minor political rhetoric,
major western thinkers
It seems to me that we are now at a point where the function of the specific intellectual needs to
be reconsidered. Reconsidered but not abandoned, despite the nostalgia of some for the great
“universal” intellectuals.
—michel foucault
The Usable Past
When did “intellectual” become a noun? Isolated instances of the term date
from 1652, but it did not enter into popular usage until the 1890s. The catalyst
seems to have been the Dreyfus Affair—a decadelong political scandal
surrounding the wrongful conviction of a Jewish artillery captain, Alfred
Dreyfus. Among its defining moments was the 13 January 1898 publication
of Émile Zola’s open letter to the president of France, in which the renowned
novelist accused military officials of anti-Semitism and obstruction of
justice. Support for Zola’s letter arrived a day later in a “Manifesto of the
Intellectuals” signed by 1,200 artists, writers, and academics, all of whom,
in an act of solidarity, now identified themselves as “intellectuals.” It was the
radical political rhetoric of these educated elites—more than their artistic,
literary, and scholarly achievements—that crystallized the social category of
“the intellectual.”
Much has been written about the subsequent history of intellectuals in
conflict with public authorities. But the history of these conflicts before the
Dreyfus Affair has not been sufficiently traced. This book attempts to provide
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