On Tue, 2003-04-08 at 00:41, Henry Gould wrote:
I reiterate my original argument on this thread. Gabriel
has been posting what amounts to propaganda, restricting
his channeling of reports on the Iraq war to anti-war &
anti-American sources, many of which (though I grant, not all)
are of questionable veracity.
Although I am enjoying reading these posts, partly for the reason of
Henry's skills in rhetorical argument, there is a danger with the above
claim in terms of the rhetoric.
The danger concerns the position from which it is argued, in that the
argument sets the speaker up as being above or accessional over the
empirical object, which in this case is media reports. This draws the
empirical into the transcendental and from a higher speaker position
allows the reports to be judged as propaganda. This then puts the
speaker in a cardinal position which is able to turn on the speaker in
such a way that what is being claimed as propaganda becomes itself a
form of propaganda. That is, the speaker becomes engaged in propaganda.
This is one of the dangers and difficulties of rhetorical argument. The
way in which meta-discourses (and meta-meta-discourses) come into
operation on top of the rhetorical discourse itself and it is handling
these meta-discourses to the advantage of the speaker's arguments that
presents both dangers and difficulties as you can never be certain which
way it may turn. There is, for example, Fox Cable which although unseen
on this list still has a power effect which is able to turn this
argument to the disadvantage of the speaker's arguments. (I use Fox only
as a possible example just to illustrate how this particular discursive
formation may function.)
Please don't be offended, Henry. I just wanted to warn you against some
dangers in your argument by way of some critical feedback. And please
don't go silent, on my count. I fully support your right to present your
views.
best
Chris Jones.
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