Provocation: Aune's Leadership: Hegemony and the Rhetorical Perspective on Argumentation

Abstract

At heart of James Amt Aune's approach to rhetorical theory and criticism was John Dewey's (1927) project of improving methods and conditions of debate, discussion, and persuasion (as cited by Aune, 2001, p. 146). Aune was hopeful that learning how to improve ways and means of argument might help left leaning coalitions overcome their recent fragmentation (2011, p. xiv). As such, Aune advocated a (1994, pp. 143-149), a mixture of Marxist critique and classical republicanism, in an effort to leverage a sprit of constant vigilance and free spaces for deliberation, discussion, and as an antidote to corrupting influence of centralized power and a taste for it (Aune, 1994, p. 146). The rhetorical in rhetorical argumentation was embedded in a humanist process of self-fashioning and a political process of cultivating virtues of moral and political leadership. Aune's red rhetoric imagined arguments as more than effective or ineffective devices for persuading audiences, but imagined art of rhetoric as making one's participation in debate and discussion a creative practice that had power to (re)invent ethico-political resources of a community in order to bring a wider transformation in political community. Aune's red rhetoric blended instrumental, constitutive, and critical dimensions of argument (Greene, 1998) into a potent force for enhancing a common life. Arguments are ways to build a common life because they require interlocutors, points of stasis, and shared points of reference. One such conceptual point of stasis and shared point of reference for critical scholars interested in rhetorical perspective on argumentation is concept of hegemony. Reading Gramsci (2011) in light of intellectual tendency of Marxist theory to displace rhetorical tradition, Aune isolates hegemony as a bridge that can productively create a red rhetoric. To do so, we will argue, entailed a strong defense of rhetorical practice as a positive form of mediation suspended between structure and struggle. As a positive mediation, Aune imagines rhetoric participating in a form of hegemony that challenges dominant structures of power (positive) by cultivating a moral and political leadership worthy of consent. The purpose of this paper is to learn from Aune's leadership about positive character of hegemony. Yet, we will argue that concept of hegemony will need to be less tied to mediation. As we will argue, problem of mediation limits our rhetorical understanding of hegemony to an epistemological-political horizon that inadvertently fails to appreciate how hegemony may work in affective and technological ways. This broader dimension of hegemony suggests that to participate in argumentative process can be independent of what one argues for or against. As such, we should attend more to how debate generates sensations and perceptions to better account for argument as a method and condition of revolutionary change. HEGEMONY AS THE STRUGGLE FOR MORAL AND POLITICAL LEADERSHIP Aune (1994) turns to notion of hegemony within a narrative about problem of mediation in after Marx (pp. 46-49). He describes problem of mediation as the classical contradiction between structure and (Aune, 1994, p. 144). The contradiction is that struggle (revolution) cannot be guaranteed by structure (the mode of production). Economic precarity and immiseration may make organizing more difficult not less; therefore, any claims to historical inevitability of socialism must be abandoned. Mediation describes intervening actors and forces between structure and struggle that make someone align with or challenge current system. For Aune (1994) Gramsci's solves problem of mediation created by classical with an emphasis on praxis and creative activity.... One of those necessary mediations [to direct life] is art of rhetoric, an art whose traditions are most compatible with version of Marxism (p. …