TRAUMA AND EMPATHY A Dissertation by AMY MARIE LARSEN Submitted to the Office of Gradu

276 Pages·2012·2.88 MB·English

IDENTIFICATION IN POSTHUMANIST RHETORIC: TRAUMA AND EMPATHY

A Dissertation
by
AMY MARIE LARSEN

Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of
Texas A&M University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Approved by:
Chair of Committee, Jimmie Killingsworth
Committee Members, Robert Griffin
Clare Palmer
Sally Robinson
Head of Department, Nancy Warren

December 2012

Major Subject: English

Copyright 2012 Amy Marie Larsen
ABSTRACT

Posthumanist rhetoric is informed by developments in the sciences and the
humanities which suggest that mind and body are not distinct from each other and,
therefore, claims of humans’ superiority over other animals based on cognitive
differences may not be justified. Posthumanist rhetoric, then, seeks to re-imagine the
human and its relationship to the world. Though “post-” implies after, like other “post-”
terms, posthumanism also coexists with humanism. This dissertation develops a concept
of posthumanist rhetoric as questioning humanist assumptions about subjectivity while
remaining entangled in them.
The destabilization of the human subject means that new identifications between
humans and nonhumans are possible, and the ethical implications of the rhetorical
strategies used to build them have yet to be worked out. Identification, a key aim of
rhetoric in the theory of Kenneth Burke and others, can persuade an audience to value
others. However, it can also obscure the realities of who does and does not benefit from
particular arguments, particularly when animal suffering is framed as human-like trauma
with psychological and cultural as well as physical effects. I argue that a posthumanist
practice of rhetoric demonstrates ways of circumventing this problem by persuading
readers not only to care about others, but also to understand that our ability to
comprehend another’s subjectivity is limited and that acknowledging these limitations is
a method of caring.
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This dissertation locates instances of resistance to and/or deployment of
posthumanist critique in recent works of literature; identifies language commonly used
in appeals that create identifications between humans and animals; and analyzes the
implications of these rhetorical strategies. To that end, I have selected texts about human
and animal suffering that engage particular themes of identification that recur in
posthumanist rhetoric. The chapters pair texts that develop each theme differently. Most
undermine human superiority as a species, but many reify the importance of certain
qualities of the liberal humanist subject by granting them to nonhumans. The points of
identification created between humans and nonhumans will inform how we re-imagine
the human subject to account for our connections, and therefore our responsibilities, to
other beings.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation could not have been completed without the help of many
people. I would like to thank my committee chair, Dr. Killingsworth, and my committee
members, Dr. Griffin, Dr. Palmer, and Dr. Robison for their support. Their feedback has
been invaluable, and I appreciate the time they have invested in guiding my preliminary
exams and subsequent research and writing. My thanks also goes to my friends and
colleagues and the department faculty and staff. I would like to express my appreciation
for the advice and encouragement of Lacie Osbourne, Marina Trninic, Claire Cothren,
Lisa D’Amico, and Sarah Hart. I am also grateful to my parents, Lee and Susan Larsen,
who taught me the importance of education and pursuing my dreams. I thank the entire
Larsen, Hayter, and Young families for their love, unwavering support, and optimism.
Finally, I express my gratitude to Dustin Young for his endless love, patience, and
encouragement.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................. ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................... iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................... v
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ................................................................................... 1
Chapter Descriptions ................................................................................................ 16
CHAPTER II EXPANDING THE REACH OF HUMANIST MORALITY
THROUGH EMPATHETIC IDENTIFICATION ........................................................ 22
Humanist Morality and Modern Ethics ..................................................................... 25
Empathetic Identification in Elephants on the Edge.................................................. 36
Empathetic Identification in Reason for Hope and The Age of Empathy ................... 43
Creating Moral Change through Humanist Appeals .................................................. 60
Empathetic Identification in The Lives of Animals .................................................... 68
CHAPTER III ANALOGIES BETWEEN HUMANS’ INSTRUMENTALIZATION
AND EXTERMINATION OF ANIMALS AND THE ABUSE OF HUMANS........... 78
Rhetorical Listening to Trauma Analogies ............................................................... 79
“It’s Like the Holocaust of Analogies!”: Analysis of PETA’s “Holocaust on Your
Plate” ....................................................................................................................... 88
Responses to “Holocaust on Your Plate” and other Holocaust Analogies ................. 92
Survivor Agency and Historical Specificity in Analogies to Colonialism, Slavery,
and Racism ............................................................................................................ 107
Sisters and Sistahs: Rhetorical Listening in Collections by Women Writers ........... 126
Summation of Analysis: The Rhetorical Risk and Potential of Analogies ............... 141
Criticisms of Speciesism in Maus and The Rabbits ................................................. 145
CHAPTER IV DEHUMANIZATION AND REHUMANIZATION IN TWO
GRAPHIC NARRATIVES ABOUT THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE ........................ 156
Dehumanizing Language in Rwandan Media ......................................................... 161
Representations of Hate Media in Deogratias and Smile through the Tears ............ 164
The Duty to Preserve Trauma in Deogratias through Empathetic Unsettlement...... 168
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The Duty to Resolve Trauma by Locating Culpability in Smile Through the Tears . 179
Developing Ethos to Convey the Duty of Memory ................................................. 191
CHAPTER V RHETORICS OF TRAUMA IN MEMOIRS ABOUT LIFE AFTER
WAR ......................................................................................................................... 195
Consubstantiality in Depictions of Trauma ............................................................. 200
Consubstantiality across Species ............................................................................ 204
Consubstantiality with the Self ............................................................................... 214
Consubstantiality with an Audience ....................................................................... 231
CHAPTER VI CONCLUSION .................................................................................. 240
REFERENCES .......................................................................................................... 254

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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
In J.M. Coetzee’s novella The Lives of Animals, the fictional novelist Elizabeth
Costello delivers a lecture to a university audience and introduces a comparison between
the “horrors” of the meat industry and those of the Holocaust by telling her audience “I
will take it that you will concede me the rhetorical power to evoke these horrors and
bring them home to you with adequate force” (19). The character Abraham Stern refuses
to concede to this rhetorical move and claims the analogy is offensive. The use of the
Holocaust to endow animal suffering with moral relevance recurs in animal rights
discourse, but the strategy risks alienating listeners who perceive how the animalization
of certain humans has led to their victimization. Costello’s audience is unified in
rejecting her rhetoric, with various characters bringing up objections to her claims that
identify humans with nonhumans. However, Costello’s arguments have resonated with
the audience of the literary text. The Lives of Animals is published with four essays of
commentary, and in Philosophy and Animal Life (Cavell et. al.), five distinguished
philosophers reflect on the implications that the novella’s literary representations of
philosophical arguments have for the discipline.
The Lives of Animals incites such commentary because it engages critiques of
liberal humanist subjectivity that are current in both academic and popular discourses.
Costello rejects the Cartesian split between mind and body that allows for the
enthymeme asserting we can do whatever we want to nonhumans, including people we
have dehumanized, because they lack a mind. The premise supporting this abuse, that
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differences in cognition make objectification acceptable, is brought to light by
developments in the sciences and the humanities which suggest that mind and body are
not so distinct after all. Posthumanism seeks to re-imagine the human and its relationship
to the world. For example, N. Katharine Hayles goes beyond contesting the mind-body
split to argue that human cognition is “distributed” among the mind, body, and technical
and natural environments. Donna Haraway finds promise in our “entangled”
relationships, seeing the diffused subject not as devoid of agency, but as more able to
perceive and perform its duties to others (When Species Meet 5).
The destabilization of the human subject means that new identifications between
humans and nonhumans are possible, and the ethical implications of the rhetorical
strategies used to build them have yet to be worked out. Identification, a key aim of
rhetoric in the theory of Kenneth Burke and others, can persuade an audience to value
others. However, it can also obscure the realities of who does and does not benefit from
particular arguments. I argue that a posthumanist practice of rhetoric demonstrates ways
of circumventing this problem by persuading readers not only to care about others, but
also to understand that our ability to comprehend another’s subjectivity is limited and
that acknowledging these limitations is a method of caring. This project develops a
concept of posthumanist rhetoric as questioning humanist assumptions about subjectivity
while remaining entangled in them. For example, texts aimed at popular audiences often
affirm humanist notions about individual agency by extending it to nonhumans. While
rhetoric that bestows “human” qualities on animals can increase identification between
humans and animals, it can also reaffirm misconceptions about human superiority.
2
The objectives of this dissertation, as a work of rhetorical criticism and theory,
are to
 locate instances of resistance to and/or deployment of posthumanist critique in
recent works of literature and popular nonfiction;
 identify language commonly used to convince an audience to “concede to” the
appeals, analogies, and tropes that are most often used to “bring home”
identifications between humans and animals;
 analyze the political implications of these rhetorical strategies.
I have selected texts about human and animal suffering that engage particular
places of identification that recur in posthumanist rhetoric, such as the perceived
connection between the Holocaust and factory farming. Animals’ ability to suffer is
repeatedly invoked in discourse surrounding their treatment, from arguments by Jeremy
Bentham to PETA. When this suffering is coded as trauma, as it is in Costello’s
Holocaust analogy, it is used to increase the moral relevance of nonhumans. Whereas
descriptions of suffering generate empathy, descriptions of trauma make a stronger call
for action by arguing that nonhumans experience long-term physical and psychological
effects that have implications that, like human trauma, extend beyond the individual and
his or her “kind.” The chapters compare texts that develop points of identifications
differently, some affirming the liberal humanist subject and others undermining it. Each
text also takes a different approach to persuasion. Though the distance between writer,
text, and reader is always a factor in persuasion, texts that have looser arguments and
more ambiguity value this distance by drawing attention to the distributed cognition of
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the reader. In contrast, more straightforward texts operate as though this distance either
does not exist or is bridgeable and imagines the writer, subject, and reader as unified
subjects rather than posthumanist, distributed ones.
How these texts create identification between writer, subject, and reader affects
who benefits from textual engagements with posthumanist critiques. This dissertation is
concerned with what the term identification has come to mean for rhetorical studies’ and
trauma studies’ conceptualizations of the human and how these models relate to the ones
proposed in posthumanist theory. According to Burke’s theory of rhetoric, all persuasion
happens with identification by the speaker and the audience with each other’s interests.
Therefore, “there is no chance of our keeping apart the meanings of persuasion,
identification (‘consubstantiality’) and communication (the nature of rhetoric as
‘addressed’)” (Rhetoric 46). Because identification entails a form of persuasion, texts
that do not fit within the traditional purview of rhetoric can be analyzed for attempts at
identification or consubstantiality. Even if texts are not persuading the audience to make
a specific decision or take a specific action, they do introduce their audience to new
concepts and use identification to make these ideas comprehensible and perhaps
convincing.
Burkean identification allows for two individuals to be identified with each other
yet not completely persuaded to share a course of action or adopt the other’s beliefs
wholesale because identification does not actually erase an individual’s uniqueness. This
relationship is expressed in the term consubstantiality because an individual becomes
“substantially one” with the other with whom she identifies, but “substance” is not an
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