Charland

 http://vox-nova.com/2009/03/19/the-constitutive/
"To call a rhetoric “constitutive” means, I think, to identity a persuasion of writing, speaking, persona, body language, lifestyle, and so on, that defines and “makes real” a culture in language and its performance. A spoken word, therefore, is a definition of a character for the speaker and at least one other, the audience, forming a community through a language provided by culture and modified by use. The audience “lives inside” the rhetoric as a part of the discourse. One primary concern of constitutive rhetoric as White understands it is the working of this complex process, the constitution of a social world full of colorful, memorable persuasion."

" Rhetorical discourse, responding to the behavior of people, is transformed through material consequence: material is neither the antecedent conditions for rhetoric nor the discourse itself; it is the effect of discourse that is materially real. A model of constitutive rhetoric might resemble a social practice of communication where such social practices are embedded in the language, a language shaping its participants and in turn being shaped by them. The social practice of discourse and persuasion is intimately connected to culture and cultural change. Audience members are not “free agents” awaiting persuasion, existing “outside” rhetoric. Emerging narratives and prompts to action affirm an identity “created” as a constitutive social force. By emphasizing the influence of culture and discourse, constitutive rhetoric can position the natural world as something that is passive and malleable in relation to human beings. The constitutive finds the nonlinguistic in need of an ordering through discourse; it is skeptical of claims of scientific, objective knowledge that might serve as a basis for subjugation and silencing."

Charland

133
"Burke's
stress on identification permits a rethinking of judgment and the working of the
rhetorical effect, for he does not posit a transcendent subject as audience member,
who would exist prior to and apart from the speech to be judged, but considers
audience members to participate in the very discourse by which they would be
"persuaded." Audiences would embody a discourse. A consequence of this theoretical
move is that it permits an understanding within rhetorical theory of ideological
discourse, of the discourse that presents itself as always only pointing to the given, the
natural, the already agreed upon."

is the audience free to be persuaded?

"However, rhetorical theory's privileging of an
audience's freedom to judge is problematic, for it assumes that audiences, with their
prejudices, interests, and motives, are given and so extra-rhetorical. Rhetorical
criticism, as Grossberg points out, posits the existence of transcendental subjects
whom discourse would mediate.4 In other words, rhetorical theory usually refuses to
consider the possibility that the very existence of social subjects (who would become
audience members) is already a rhetorical effect."

Some things beyond range of persuasion

Social identities - rhetorical

134
"attempts to elucidate
ideological or identity-forming discourses as persuasive are trapped in a contradiction:
persuasive discourse requires a subject-as-audience who is already constituted
with an identity and within an ideology."

"If it is easier to
praise Athens before Athenians than before Laecedemonians, we should ask how
those in Athens come to experience themselves as Athenians. Indeed, a rhetoric to
Athenians in praise of Athens would be relatively insignificant compared to a
rhetoric that constitutes Athenians as such. What I propose to develop in this essay is
a theory of constitutive rhetoric that would account for this process. I will elaborate
this theory of constitutive rhetoric through an examination of a case where the
identity of the audience is clearly problematic: the independence movement in
Quebec, Canada's French-speaking province."

" I will show how claims for Quebec sovereignty base
themselves upon the asserted existence of a particular type of subject, the
"Quebecois." That subject and the collectivized "peuple quebecois" are, in Althusser's
language, "interpellated" as political subjects through a process of identification
in rhetorical narratives that "always already" presume the constitution of subjects."
Very similar to many groups

"In French, Quebec's majority language,
the MSA declared: "Nous sommes des Quebecois" ("We are Quebecois") and called
for Quebec's independence from Canada.6 This declaration marked the entry of the
term "Quebecois" into the mainstream of Quebec political discourse. Until that time,
members of the French-speaking society of Quebec were usually termed "Canadiens
frarn;ais" ("French-Canadians"). With the MSA, a national identity for a new type
of political subject was born, a subject whose existence would be presented as
justification for the constitution of a new state. Thus, the MSA's declaration is an
instance of constitutive rhetoric, for it calls its audience into being. Furthermore, as
an instance of constitutive rhetoric, it was particularly effective, for within a decade
of the creation of that mouvement, the term "Quebecois" had gained currency even
among certain supporters of the Canadian federal system"

135
transition - Canadian political life
"The White Paper, as it articulated the reasons for Quebec's political independence,
was a rhetorical document. It offered a variety of arguments demonstrating
that Quebecois were an oppressed peuple within the confines of Canada's constitution
who would be better off with their own country. These arguments were
presented in the context of the constitutive rhetoric of the "peuple quebecois." This
constitutive rhetoric took the form of a narrative account of Quebec history in which
Quebecois were identified with their forebears who explored New France, who
l"uffered under the British conquest, and who struggled to erect the Quebec
provincial state apparatus."
Can't help but think of Native American tribes - language

Quebecois antithetical to being Canadian
" The election of the Parti Quebecois and the strength of its souverainiste option in
the Referendum reveals the significance of the constitutive rhetoric of a "peuple
quebecois." While some might consider the White Paper to be a rhetorical failure
because less than half of Quebec's French-speaking population opted for independence,
the outcome of the Referendum reveals that its constitutive rhetoric was
particularly powerful."



" Furthermore, if we consider that Morin's observation is contentious
and partisan, 14 and that many in Quebec would contest his assessment of their
collective identity, we find confirmation of McGee's further assertion that the
identity of a "people," as a rhetorical construct, is not even agreed upon by those who
would address it. 15"

"Indeed, the debate in Quebec
permits us to see the radical implication of McGee's argument, for not only is the
character or identity of the "peuple" open to rhetorical revision, but the very
boundary of whom the term "peuple" includes and excludes is rhetorically
constructed: as the "peuple" is variously characterized, the persons who make up the
"peuple" can change."

"Thus, consider the rather extreme counter-argument to
Morin's claim that a peuple quebecois exists and is gaining self-awareness, as
articulated by William Shaw and Lionel Albert, two Quebec opponents of sovereignty,
who conversely assert that no Quebec peuple exists, that the term "Quebecois"
properly only applies to residents of the City of Quebec, and that the term as used by
Quebec nationalists constitutes a "semantic fraud":"

"Separatists measure the degree of their penetration of the public consciousness by the
extent to which the people are willing to call themselves Quebecois. The more they can
persuade the French Canadians in Quebec to call themselves Quebecois, the easier the task
of insinuating the idea that those French Canadians who happen to live in eastern or
northern Ontario or in northern New Brunswick are somehow "different" from those
living in Quebec" How annoying
137
"What Shaw and Albert ignore, of course, is that the French-speaking peuple or
nation that they assert exists also becomes real only through rhetoric. Indeed, the
possibility of political action requires that political actors be within a "fictive"
discourse. More precisely, as Althusser asserts: "there is no practice except by and in
an ideology." 17 Political identity must be an ideological fiction, even though, as
McGee correctly notes, this fiction becomes historically material and of consequence
as persons live it."

" the "Quebecois," so constituted that sovereignty is
a natural and necessary way of life. Furthermore, and hardly surprisingly, the
ultimate justification for these claims is the subject's character, nature, or essence.
This is so because this identity defines inherent motives and interests that a rhetoric
can appeal to. The ideological "trick" of such a rhetoric is that it presents that which
is most rhetorical, the existence of a peuple, or of a subject, as extrarhetorical. These
members of the peuple whose supposed essence demands action do not exist in
nature, but only within a discursively constituted history."


"We find a treatment of this constitutive phenomenon in Edwin Black's discussion
of the "second persona."18 As Michael McGuire observes, Black's process of
transforming an audience occurs through identification, in Burke's sense. 19 However,
to simply accept such an account of this process would be inadequate. It would
not fully explain the significance of becoming one with a persona, of entering into
and embodying it. In particular, to simply state that audiences identify with a
persona explains neither ( 1) the ontological status of those in the audience before
their identification, nor (2) the ontological status of the persona, and the nature of
identifying with it. In order to clarify these ontological issues, we must consider
carefully the radical edge of Burke's identificatory principle. Burke asserts that, as
"symbol using" animals, our being is significantly constituted in our symbolicity. As
Burke puts it, "so much of the 'we' that is separated from the nonverbal by the verbal
would not even exist were it not for the verbal (or for our symbolicity in general[) ]."20
In this, Burke moves towards collapsing the distinction between the realm of the
symbolic and that of human conceptual consciousness. From such a perspective, we
cannot accept the 'givenness' of "audience," "person," or "subject," but must
consider their very textuality, their very constitution in rhetoric as a structured
articulation of signs. We must, in other words, consider the textual nature of social
being."
" Burke has been
developed in a tradition sharing much with him, that of structuralism.21 Structuralist
semiotics and narrative theory have deconstructed the concept of the unitary and
transcendent subject."
138
"Althusser describes the process of inscribing subjects into ideology as "interpellation":

"Interpellation occurs at the very moment one enters into a rhetorical situation, that
is, as soon as an individual recognizes and acknowledges being addressed. An
interpellated subject participates in the discourse that addresses him. Thus, to be
interpellated is to become one of Black's personae and be a position in a discourse. In
consequence, interpellation has a significance to rhetoric, for the acknowledgment of
an address entails an acceptance of an imputed self-understanding which can form
the basis for an appeal. Furthermore, interpellation occurs rhetorically, through the
effect of the addressed discourse. Note, however, that interpellation does not occur
through persuasion in the usual sense, for the very act of addressing is rhetorical. It
is logically prior to the rhetorical narratio. In addition, this rhetoric of identification
is ongoing, not restricted to one hailing, but usually part of a rhetoric of socialization."

From Wikipedia:
Interpellation is a concept in Marxist social and political theory associated in particular with the work of the philosopher Louis Althusser. Althusser used the term interpellation (see Louis Althusser, Essays on Ideology (Verson: 1970), p.11) to describe the process by which ideology, embodied in major social and political institutions, constitutes the nature of individual subjects' identities through the very process of institutions and discourses of 'hailing' them in social interactions. Althusser thus goes against the classical definition of the subject as cause and substance: emphasising instead how the situation always precedes the (individual or collective) subject, which precisely as subject is "always-already interpellated". Individual subjects are presented principally as produced by social forces, rather than acting as powerful independent agents with self-produced identities. Althusser's argument here strongly draws from Jacques Lacan's concept of the mirror stage. 
 "But note,
personae are not persons; they remain in the realm of words. As McGee observes, a
"people" is a fiction which comes to be when individuals accept living within a
political myth.24 This myth would be ontological, constitutive of those "seduced" by
it. In Quebec, what McGee terms the myth of the "people" is articulated in the
Quebec government's White Paper."
139
 "Roland Barthes well expresses this ultimate textuality of
narratives when he asserts that: "Narrative does not show, does not imitate; the
passion which may excite us ... is not that of a 'vision' (in actual fact, we do not 'see'
anything)."26 In other words, narratives work through a representational effect.
Texts are but surfaces; characters are, in a sense, but "paper beings," to use Barthes'
phrase. These paper beings seem real through textual operations. The distinct acts
and events in a narrative become linked through identification arising from the
narrative form. Narratives lead us to construct and fill in coherent unified subjects
out of temporally and spatially separate events."

"All narratives, as they create the illusion of merely revealing a unified and
unproblematic subjectivity, are ideological, because they occult the importance of
discourse, culture, and history in giving rise to subjectivity, and because, as G. H.
Mead and Freud have made clear, subjectivity is always social, constituted in
language, and exists in a delicate balance of contradictory drives and impulses.
Narratives suppress the fact that, in a very real sense, no person is the same as he or
she was a decade ago, or last year, or indeed yesterday. In raising the ultimate
"falsity" of narratives, my intention is not, however, to decry them and hold out for
some unmediated consciousness. Nor am I here concerned with a philosophical
critique of the subject in Western civilization. My intention is to show the degree to
which collective identities forming the basis of rhetorical appeals themselves depend
upon rhetoric; the "peuple quebecois," and "peoples" in general, exist only through
... m ideological discourse that constitutes them."

"In the rhetoric of Quebec sovereignty, the "Quebecois" is a collective subject. It
offers, in Burke's language, an "ultimate" identification permitting an overcoming or
going beyond of divisive individual or class interests and concerns.27 This identity
transcends the limitations of the individual body and will. This process of constituting
a collective subject is the first ideological effect of constitutive rhetoric. If a peuple
exists, it is only in ideology, as McGee makes clear. That ideology arises in the very
nature of narrative history. To tell the story of the Quebecois is implicitly to assert the
existence of a collective subject, the protagonist of the historical drama, who
experiences, suffers, and acts." How is this different for any group

140
"In a radically empiricist mood, I could assert that a society qua society has no soul,
no struggles, no successes. Clearly, history proceeds by the acts of individuals. But, of
course, individuals can act in concert or as a mass, they can respond to apersonal
historical forces, and we can interpret the sum total of their individual actions with
respect to a collective agent." Seems awful and soulless!

'This
positing of a transhistorical subject is the second ideological effect of constitutive
rhetoric. Here, ancestry is offered as the concrete link between the French settlers of
North America, those in Quebec today, and a collectivity. Time is collapsed as
narrative identification occurs: today's Quebec residents constitute a peuple and have
a right to their own state because members of their community have discovered,
claimed, and occupied the land. This interpretive stance is perfectly reasonable."

"Form renders the "Quebecois" a real subject within the historical narrative. The
"Quebecois" does not, however, become a free subject. Subjects within narratives are
not free, they are positioned and so constrained. All narratives have power over the
subjects they present. The endings of narratives are fixed before the telling. The
freedom of the character in a narrative is an illusion, for narratives move inexorably
toward their telos. The characters in a story are obviously not free."

"Thus, in the rhetoric of Quebec
sovereignty, "Quebecois" is not merely a descriptive term, but identifies and
positions the Quebec voter with respect to his or her future."

141
"The freedom of the protagonist of this narrative is but an illusion. This illusion of
freedom is the third ideological effect of constitutive rhetoric. Freedom is illusory
because the narrative is already spoken or written. Furthermore, because the
narrative is a structure of understanding that produces totalizing interpretations,32
the subject is constrained to follow through, to act so as to maintain the narrative's
consistency."

" The ideological effects of constitutive rhetoric that I have outlined are not merely
formal effects inscribed within the bracketed experience of interpreting a text. In
other words, these do not only permit a disinterested understanding of a fictive world.
What is significant in constitutive rhetoric is that it positions the reader towards
political, social, and economic action in the material world and it is in this positioning
that its ideological character becomes significant. For the purpose of analysis, this
positioning of subjects as historical actors can be understood as a two-step process.
First, audience members must be successfully interpellated; not all constitutive
rhetorics succeed. Second, the tautological logic of constitutive rhetoric must
necessitate action in the material world; constitutive rhetoric must require that its
embodied subjects act freely in the social world to affirm their subject position."

142
"However, this world is not seamless and a subject position's world view can be
laced with contradictions. We can, as Burke puts it, encounter "recalcitrance."33 In
addition, as Stuart Hall observes, various contradictory subject positions can
simultaneously exist within a culture:34 we can live within many texts. These
contradictions place a strain upon identification with a given subject position and
render possible a subject's rearticulation."

"Thus, for example, the subject position "Quebecois" arises from a rearticulation of
two positions, that of "Canadien frarn;ais," and that of the Quebec resident and voter
with a collective will ostensibly represented by the Quebec government. Because
some French-Canadians live outside of Quebec and not all those in Quebec are
French-speaking, the identity "Canadien fran~ais" cannot permit the articulation of
a French-speaking nation-state in North America. As the White Paper never fails to
remind its audience, to be "Canadien fran~ais" is to be a member of an impotent
minority without a proper homeland"

"The White Paper offers, therefore, a
particular instance of narrative rhetoric that, in Fisher's language, "give[s] order to
human experience and ... induce[s] others to dwell in fit] to establish ways of living
in common, in communion in which there is sanction for the story that constitutes
one's life" (italics added).35"

143
"To enter into the White Paper's rhetorical narrative is to identify with Black's
second persona. It is the process of recognizing oneself as the subject in a text. It is to
exist at the nodal point of a series of identifications and to be captured in its structure
and in its production of meaning. It is to be a subject which exists beyond one's body
and !if e span. It is to have and experience the dangerous memories of British
conquest and rule. It is to live towards national independence. Then, the power of the
text is the power of an embodied ideology. The form of an ideological rhetoric is
effective because it is within the bodies of those it constitutes as subjects. These
subjects owe their existence to the discourse that articulates them. As Burke puts it:
"An 'ideology' is like a god coming down to earth, where it will inhabit a place
pervaded by its presence. An 'ideology' is like a spirit taking up its abode in a body: it
makes that body hop around in certain ways; and that same body would have hopped
around in different ways had a different ideology happened to inhabit it."36 Thus,
from the subjectivity or point of view of the embodied souverainiste discourse, not
only would there exist "good reasons" for supporting sovereignty, but good motives
as well, motives arising from the very essence of the Quebecois' being."

"The White Paper offers an unfinished history: the peuple quebecois
has yet to obtain its independence. Thus, the Quebecois addressed by the White
Paper must bring to a close the saga begun by the subjects of the White Paper's
history. In other words, while classical narratives have an ending, constitutive
rhetorics leave the task of narrative closure to their constituted subjects. It is up to the
Quebecois of 1980 to conclude the story to which they are identified. The story the
White Paper offers is of a besieged peuple that has always continued to struggle in
order to survive and to assert its right to self-determination."

144
"The Parliament of Lower Canada, where the language was French, proposed laws and a
budget that were submitted for approval to the Governor, who exercised executive power
on behalf of London. The peuple's will was often blocked by the veto of the Governor,
particularly sensitive to the interests of the English minority of Lower Canada and those of
the imperial power. The consequent tension was leading, by 1830, to exasperation. The
representatives drew up a set of resolutions in which they expressed their demands: control
by the Assembly of taxes and spending, and the adoption of urgent social and economic
measures. The Governor refused and dissolved the House. In the elections that followed,
the Patriotes, headed by Papineau, won 77 out of 88 seats with 90% of the vote. To the
same demands, the Governor responded by dissolving the House once again. 38

The rhetorical significance of this passage is twofold. First, it typifies the text's
constitution of a subject subjugated by Britain. Note how it confronts victory with
power. In doing so, it highlights what can be presented as an inherent contradiction
of "French-Canadian" as a subject position that interpellates French-Canadians
both as French ethnic subjects and Canadian political subjects. Second, this passage,
again typically, rearticulates this subject position: it articulates "Quebecois" as a
polltical subject battling on the terrain of parliament. In doing so, it dissolves any
possible contradiction between loyalty to an (ethnic) nation and the federal state and
it articulates both a site for and an object of struggle: the Quebec state apparatus and
its legitimated institutions."

 145
 "Canada is an antagonist in this life-drama of a peuple.
As such, Canada must be overcome so that the tensions in the mythic narrative and in
history can be resolved. The "natural" principle that peuples attain control of their
future is denied because Ottawa will preside over destiny. Within the context of the
repression of the Patriotes, this new order does not arise from the peuple quebecois
but from external constraints."

147
" Its rhetorical effect derives from their interpellation as subjects and on
their identification with a transhistorical and transindividual subject position. It is in
this sense of textualizing audiences, therefore, that we can understand the process
Black treats in his discussion of the second persona and McGee discusses in his study
of the "people." From this perspective, we can see that audiences do not exist outside
rhetoric, merely addressed by it, but live inside rhetoric. Indeed, from the moment
they enter into the world of language, they are subjects; the very moment of
recognition of an address constitutes an entry into a subject position to which inheres
a set of motives that render a rhetorical discourse intelligible."