Jimmie Killingsworth and (especially)
Sharon Daniels different types of text provide intriguing information some may
not normally question or pursue. In Killingsworth’s chapter from the Appeals in Modern Rhetoric: an
Ordinary-Language Approach, we are introduced to the idea that a trope is a
form of rhetorical appeal. The tropes discussed in this reading were based off
of Burkes “four classical figures with four habits of mind or conceptual
attitudes more easily recognized by modern readers: metaphor with perspective, metonymy with reduction, synecdoche with representation, and irony with dialectic” (Killingsworth 123). However,
Killingsworth reinterprets Burke’s tropes, and attaches alternative “habits of
mind or conceptual attitudes.”
What is at stake in our understanding of Killingsworth’s typology of four tropes? The conflict may rest in Killingworth’s understanding of identification/metaphor, association/metonymy, representation/synecdoche, distance/irony, and the tension between him and Burke. Burkes link of metaphor/perspective is similar to Killingsworth’s identification/metaphor because perspective and identification rely on each other in a sense. Yet, Burke’s metonymy/reduction and Killingsworth’s association/metonymy seem to collide. Burke’s union places metonymy as a lessening trope making Killingsworth’s association more appealing. Not much seems to be at stake in the discussion of synecdoche and representation for Burke and Killingworth see eye to eye, but what about dialectic and distance in relation to irony? These two terms are completely different approaches to synecdoche.
Certainly, we can assume that Killingsworth views tropes as flexible. He argues for their persuasive importance because he sees a room for advance in his theory of appeals. Still, it is hard to pinpoint Killingsworth’s belief of tropes as forms or as art for art sake (so this is a question I throw back to the class). In reference to tropes as art for art sake, I was immediately reminded and compelled to take a look at Longinus On the Sublime, and his/her mention of figures of speech. Sublimity tends to lean more toward the artistic and one of the “most productive sources of sublimity are certain kinds of figures” (350). At this point, it is confusing to fully understand the treatment of tropes. Is it possible to treat them like forms and art? In a nutshell, with sublimity in mind, Killingsworth breaks it all down to wit and judgment. Metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche tend to be tropes of wit; irony involves both wit and judgment (134).
After reading Killingsworth opinions on tropes and viewing Sharon Daniels’ Public Secrets project, a couple of the previously stated tropes were evident and working throughout Daniel’s hypertext. The most obvious of these tropes is irony. In the author’s statement of Public Secrets, Daniels states that there is a “reliance on prisons to solve social problems.” How can an institution resolve such a complex situation? It is ironic that this sort of responsibility is being put into the hands of an establishment focused on “reducing the subject to a biological entity—a bare-life preserved only as an expression of sovereign power” (Daniels Bare-Life aporia). Thinking of metaphor as “identification, a way of bringing together seemingly unlike things” (123), we can conclude that Daniel’s project is one huge metaphor. She brings together aporias of life inside and outside the prison, human-life versus bare-life, and utopia and the public secret. Also, it seems suitable to mention Foucault and his idea of power structures. What’s the relationship of any to this project (another question I throw back to the class)?
Moreover, it is important to discuss what characteristics or qualities of Daniel’s hypertext essay that make it especially interpretable as a critique? Drawing on Mikhail Bahktin and his coined term heteroglossia, Daniels hypertext is “another’s speech in another’s language, serving to express authorial intentions but in a refracted way” (Bahktin 324). Daniels incorporates countless amounts of narrators in her hypertext accompanied with audio. She uses the voices to aggressively get her point across i.e. the critique of the prison system in California (and probably everywhere). The voices are different, some strained, others weak. This plays on the emotions of the reader/audience, and makes it particularly decipherable.
Works Cited
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. “Discourse in the Novel.” The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: U of Texas P, 1981. 259-331.
Daniel, Sharon. “Public Secrets.” Vectors 2.2 (Winter 2007): n. pag. Web. http://www.vectorsjournal.org/projects/index.php?project=57
Killingsworth, M. Jimmie. “Appeal Through Tropes.” Appeals in Modern Rhetoric: An Ordinary-Language Approach. Carbondale: Southern Illnios UP, 2005. 121-135
Longinus. “From On the Sublime.” The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, Second Edition. Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. 344-358.
What is at stake in our understanding of Killingsworth’s typology of four tropes? The conflict may rest in Killingworth’s understanding of identification/metaphor, association/metonymy, representation/synecdoche, distance/irony, and the tension between him and Burke. Burkes link of metaphor/perspective is similar to Killingsworth’s identification/metaphor because perspective and identification rely on each other in a sense. Yet, Burke’s metonymy/reduction and Killingsworth’s association/metonymy seem to collide. Burke’s union places metonymy as a lessening trope making Killingsworth’s association more appealing. Not much seems to be at stake in the discussion of synecdoche and representation for Burke and Killingworth see eye to eye, but what about dialectic and distance in relation to irony? These two terms are completely different approaches to synecdoche.
Certainly, we can assume that Killingsworth views tropes as flexible. He argues for their persuasive importance because he sees a room for advance in his theory of appeals. Still, it is hard to pinpoint Killingsworth’s belief of tropes as forms or as art for art sake (so this is a question I throw back to the class). In reference to tropes as art for art sake, I was immediately reminded and compelled to take a look at Longinus On the Sublime, and his/her mention of figures of speech. Sublimity tends to lean more toward the artistic and one of the “most productive sources of sublimity are certain kinds of figures” (350). At this point, it is confusing to fully understand the treatment of tropes. Is it possible to treat them like forms and art? In a nutshell, with sublimity in mind, Killingsworth breaks it all down to wit and judgment. Metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche tend to be tropes of wit; irony involves both wit and judgment (134).
After reading Killingsworth opinions on tropes and viewing Sharon Daniels’ Public Secrets project, a couple of the previously stated tropes were evident and working throughout Daniel’s hypertext. The most obvious of these tropes is irony. In the author’s statement of Public Secrets, Daniels states that there is a “reliance on prisons to solve social problems.” How can an institution resolve such a complex situation? It is ironic that this sort of responsibility is being put into the hands of an establishment focused on “reducing the subject to a biological entity—a bare-life preserved only as an expression of sovereign power” (Daniels Bare-Life aporia). Thinking of metaphor as “identification, a way of bringing together seemingly unlike things” (123), we can conclude that Daniel’s project is one huge metaphor. She brings together aporias of life inside and outside the prison, human-life versus bare-life, and utopia and the public secret. Also, it seems suitable to mention Foucault and his idea of power structures. What’s the relationship of any to this project (another question I throw back to the class)?
Moreover, it is important to discuss what characteristics or qualities of Daniel’s hypertext essay that make it especially interpretable as a critique? Drawing on Mikhail Bahktin and his coined term heteroglossia, Daniels hypertext is “another’s speech in another’s language, serving to express authorial intentions but in a refracted way” (Bahktin 324). Daniels incorporates countless amounts of narrators in her hypertext accompanied with audio. She uses the voices to aggressively get her point across i.e. the critique of the prison system in California (and probably everywhere). The voices are different, some strained, others weak. This plays on the emotions of the reader/audience, and makes it particularly decipherable.
Works Cited
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. “Discourse in the Novel.” The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: U of Texas P, 1981. 259-331.
Daniel, Sharon. “Public Secrets.” Vectors 2.2 (Winter 2007): n. pag. Web. http://www.vectorsjournal.org/projects/index.php?project=57
Killingsworth, M. Jimmie. “Appeal Through Tropes.” Appeals in Modern Rhetoric: An Ordinary-Language Approach. Carbondale: Southern Illnios UP, 2005. 121-135
Longinus. “From On the Sublime.” The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, Second Edition. Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. 344-358.
As I was reading your post, multiple things really stuck out to me. One was the claim that you made about the reader being able to assume that "Daniel's project is one huge metaphor." While the discussion of tropes and irony is a very hot topic this week in light of Killingsworth's text, you may want to really look into the nature of the project as a whole and find the irony, not in the discourse surrounding the project, but with the discourse surrounding the topic. Each story, in its own right, is ironic (women getting more time for the same offense, guards abusing their duties simply because it's a women's prison, etc.). These are the elements that shock the reader, that instill the irony. It is not the project that is ironic; it is the revelation of society that the project brings which holds the social impact, as well as the irony.
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