The dominant model of argument is not, in brief, a dialectical model so much as it is a zero-sum game model, veering toward a contact sport, that does not invite active participation of those who attend to it or a search for higher truths of those who engage in it.2
Our preferred model of argument elevates the search for better ideas over what Burke calls “advantage-seeking.” But like Burke, we acknowledge that at least some element of advantage-seeking is to be found in every argument, no matter how civil the arguers’ tone, no matter how accommodating they may be of opposing views. No one argues purely to discover better ideas, and it is important early in the semester when weaning students from their overly agonistic models of argument, not to overstate the high-mindedness of our own enterprise and thereby to set them up for further disillusionment. Argument, after all, typically involves some investment of one’s ego and one’s heart as well as one’s mind and one’s judgment. Most of us undertake the risks of argument—the risk of alienating people, of arousing opposition, of missing the point and having that fact pointed out, not always kindly, in a public setting—only if our fondest beliefs or self-interests are at stake. Even the most selfless of arguers wishes, if not to win an argument, to at least “get it right.” To lose an argument, or even to have one’s argument called into question, may well require one to go back and reexamine beliefs that anchor one’s identity. So argument is risky, in part because we are seeking advantage for our interests and beliefs or are striving to prevent others from winning an advantage for their interests and beliefs. But that said, most of us—even, or perhaps especially, terrorists—truly believe that in serving our interests larger interests are served and that in forwarding our beliefs we are working toward truth and justice for others. To be sure, all of us find ourselves sometimes serving as apostles of, if not injustice, ideas that are, at best, the least unjust of a bad lot. But there is a certain nobility in even this pursuit and students should be reminded of this fact early in the semester.
What provokes the arguments of Fish and Leo is an event, 9/11, that caused many Americans to alter their perceptions of and assumptions about the world. Until September 11, 2001, no foreign power had managed to invade the country or kill significant numbers of American citizens on American soil in centuries. After 9/ll, our sense of invulnerability and of our role in the world required reexamination while our beliefs about the rest of the world’s attitude toward us had to be radically revised. In sum, the events of 9/11 represent a classic instance of what in rhetoric is referred to as an “exigence.” According to Lloyd Bitzer, who coined the term forty years ago as part of his revisionist look at the rhetorical situation, “Any exigence is an imperfection marked by urgency; it is a defect, an obstacle, something waiting to be done, a thing which is other than it should be” (304). An exigence cannot be, in the language of debate, an “inherent” problem, some unchangeable aspect of the human condition, say, that defies solution; and it cannot be a problem that can be solved directly by extra-verbal means. “An exigence is rhetorical when it is capable of positive modification and when positive modification requires discourse or can be assisted by discourse” (304). The terrorist of attack of 9/11 demanded “discourse” of every one of us, whether we mulled over our responses in silent soliloquies or submitted them aloud or in print for public scrutiny. What did we make of the attack? How should we respond, as a nation and as individuals? Most Americans tried to articulate their feelings about the attack and to find some way of forming an ethical judgment of it. We often looked to trusted pundits like Leo, and academics like Fish who shared their thoughts in the media, to help us find expression for thoughts that eluded us and ideals that might guide us.
Both Fish and Leo share the requisite sense of urgency about what needs to be done in response to the exigence. For Leo, the lesson of 9/11 is that time has come to begin pushing the “multicultural-therapeutic left” away from its sloppy relativism and to offer a united, presumably “monocultural,” front in opposition to the terrorist threat. It is a line of thinking that appears to anticipate some lines of thought pursued subsequently by our political leadership: the world changed on 9/11 calling for an overhaul of our political priorities and our value system (or a return to our core values), including the sacrifice of some liberties in exchange for better security; our enemy is “terrorism” or some variation thereof (“Islamic fascism,” “international terrorist movement” “Muslim extremists”) that is monolithic, shadowy, and nihilistic in nature; in opposing this enemy we must be uncompromising and go it alone if other members of the international community do not share our vision. By the same token, Fish’s essay appears to anticipate many of the arguments put forth by eventual critics of the Iraq war, after Iraq became in effect a testing ground for ideas very much like those supported by Leo. What resulted is a textbook example of what has happened throughout history when absolutist ideas are tested on reality. The monolithic model of evil ran afoul of the heterogeneous nature of a deeply divided society. While terrorist groups did enter the fray after the American occupation, most of the violence after 2003 was sectarian violence, inflicted by specific groups, each “with a full roster of grievances, goals and strategies” seeking advantage for their interests.
One of the interesting questions raised by the notion of exigence is the degree to which the “defect” or “obstacle” it names is in the world versus in the eye of the beholder. Our own “realist” reading of the two essays would place exigence in both places. That is, Fish and Leo’s essays are at once responses to an event in the world independent of the power of language to change or reverse it, and continuations of the two writers’ lifelong working out of their belief systems. While Leo may imply that 9/11 changed the world, the world he describes in the wake of 9/11 is a world that has much in common with the dystopia he has been decrying for many years, and his prescription for dealing with the post-9/11 world is consistent with proposals for reform he has been making since the 1960s.
Likewise Fish’s liberal response (though Fish typically eludes labels like liberal/conservative, his position on this particular issue lines up with the position that many liberals ultimately took on the issue) to the exigence of 9/11 echoes ideas that he has been articulating for over thirty years in the realms of literary and legal theory. His insistence that we attend to the particulars of our enemies’ complaints in order to understand their motivations and what we are up against is of a piece with his insistence that we attend to the details of texts and work out their meaning in the context of their authors’ intentions. His contention that in justifying our responses to 9/11 we can only appeal to those contingent truths that we hold to in common with other members of a community who shares our beliefs—“the record of aspiration and accomplishment that makes up our collective understanding of what we live for”—is of a piece with his belief in communities of readers who work out standards for meaning and interpretation among themselves.
Our interest in connecting Leo and Fish’s arguments about 9/11 to their larger world view goes beyond any interest we might have in correctly labeling their political positions. Understanding the source of their claims is, we would argue, key to understanding the tone the two writers take in expressing those claims. Establishing a reasonably clear way of talking about matters of tone early on in an argument course is critical. It is critical because of the difficulties so many students face in finding an appropriate voice in their arguments. Part of this difficulty can be traced back to the different stages of development students occupy when they arrive in our classes. Students leaning toward dualism, for example, may adopt an overly aggressive tone in their arguments. (While few full-fledged dualists show up on day one in our classes, it is a position to which some, particularly first year college students, retreat when they feel threatened intellectually.) Remember, much is at stake for a dualist placed in the position of justifying ideas that they assume should require no justification. One symptom of this anxiety will be a tone of aggressive, if unearned, certitude. Claims, no matter how shaky, will be delivered with little support, no qualification and absolute conviction. Controversial categorical judgments, particularly moral judgments, will be handed down as if by fiat. Opposing arguments will be dismissed out of hand no matter how strong they may appear to a third party. Any reader not in complete agreement with the author of such an argument may well feel more bullied than persuaded.
Their counterparts in multiplicity, meanwhile, tend also to
