Revolutionary Rhetoric Research Articles

The Eighteenth Century or Fin-de-Siècle Beginnings

The Eighteenth Century or Fin-de-Siècle Beginnings Diane Fourny W HILE WORKING ON THIS ESSAY, I was interrupted one morning by a National Public Radio broadcast reporting what I can only call a fin-de-siècle “happening.” According to the broadcaster a group of concerned French citizens was mounting a cam­ paign to purge France’s national anthem of its bellicose lyrics. This furor over the Marseillaise had arisen over its delivery at the opening cere­ monies of the Olympic Winter Games in Albertville when ten-year-old Séverine Dupelloux, unaccompanied, sang the national anthem before an audience of hundreds present and millions worldwide via satellite tele­ vision. As her small, uplifted voice poignantly resonated throughout the arena, TV viewers everywhere could follow the anthem’s lyrics being simultaneously translated by subtitles flashed across their screens. Some­ how, there arose a certain incongruity between the child’s innocent voice and “ furrows of blood” in the minds of some viewers, suggesting scan­ dal, worse yet—a brutal, erotically charged image of lost innocence fill­ ing an already excited night air of competitive sports. Something had to be done. Yet, no sooner had a campaign to change the anthem’s lyrics formed than a countergroup, calling itself the Committee for the Defense of the Marseillaise, demanded a “ hands off” policy, accusing those reform-minded individuals of totalitarian-type leanings, suggesting that only a regime like the former Soviet Union would dare to “rewrite” history.1 Criticizing the Marseillaise's violent overtures to war and the spilling of enemy blood is hardly new.2 Nor should it come as any surprise that during this our most “ postmodern” hour, political activists on the Left (Danielle Mitterrand being the most striking sympathizer of the reform campaign) should deny their historical debt to the revolutionary rhetoric of 1789. Given a context of fin-de-siècle as such, the Marseillaise “hap­ pening” should be read as a repetition of that simultaneous emergence and reversal of political extremes at both ends of the ideological spec­ trum so frequently expressed under fin-de-siècle Europe a hundred years ago—let it not be forgotten—at a time when the first modern Greek Olympic Games were being initiated internationally in 1894. The irony, or more aptly, discomfort here—that the Marseillaise should create a Vol. XXXII, No. 4 7 L ’E sprit C réateur scandal at these first Olympic Games since the fall of the Berlin Wall— lay in the fact that as the very notion of political animosity had all but been eradicated (so say the proponents of a “New World Order”), up popped the ugly head of political contention once again in the form of censorship by the Left on the one hand and conservative chauvinism on the other. Furthermore, what to make of the lackluster medal showing by the Americans and the oxymoronic presence of the former Soviet Union’s “Unified Team” ? And should the hoarding of the gold, silver, and bronze by “Old Europe” become a new source of speculation (the Germans and Austrians in particular, though France also collected more medals than in recent past Olympics)? Had the spirit of 1992 Games been contaminated with that of the politically charged Games of 1894-1904?3 France’s collective discomfiture with Séverine Dupelloux’s rendition of the Marseillaise—which should also be read as the very eroticization of that voice—points to a deep and often times, mystified filiation to finde -siècle aesthetics and ideology of the French Revolution. In this essay, I will argue that the spirit of fin-de-siècle begins with the French Revolu­ tion as principle of a regenerative force. In many respects, the fin-desi ècle reiterates a desire to rejoin sacred time, the time of violent social upheavals and of new foundations. At the same time it refuses to fulfill such a desire, out of fear or perhaps fatigue, that new foundations remain merely repetitions of the same. If thinkers of modernity are cor­ rect in seeing this period as pivotal—the French Revolution validating a historical consciousness of a new age defined as a present open onto the future...

THE OGADEN AND THE FRAGILITY OF SOMALI SEGMENTARY NATIONALISM

THE OGADEN, who traditionally live as herdsmen in the region named after them in eastern Ethiopia, bordering the Somali Republic, are part of the wider Darod family of Somali clans. They attracted world attention a decade ago during their abortive attempt to secure independence from Ethiopia in the 1977-78 war between Somalia and Ethiopia. In retrospect, it is easy to see that this represented the high point of Somali nationalist fervour in recent Somali history. It was also a testimony to the strenuous efforts of the present Somali head of state in seeking to transform Somali nationalism from its old segmentary style to a modern organic mode. Shortly after seizing power in 1969, the present Head of State, General Mohamad Siyad Barre, adopted 'Scientific Socialism' to unite the nation and eradicate its ancient clan divisions. 'Tribalism', which was associated with nepotism and corruption, was officially banned and ritually buried in 1971. Tribalistic behaviour became a serious criminal offence. The collective payment of blood money was correspondingly outlawed, and marriage officially emptied of its corporate lineage sigrlificance. The universal term of address 'cousin', implying clansman, was replaced by the term jaalle (comrade). Lineage genealogies and their use to identify people were banned; even the old circumlocation 'ex-clan' was forbidden. In their place, the Head of State was presented in the revolutionary rhetoric as the 'Father' of a nation whose 'Mother' was his Revolution. This stirring ideology, legitimated by reference to the holy trinity of Marx, Lenin and Siyad, was thrust upon the masses through intense radio propaganda and through the Orientation Centres which were set up throughout the state, which had itself been divided into new provinces cutting across traditional clan boundaries. Radiating out from the Presidency, the locally organized people's vigilantes (or 'Victory Pioneers', led by the 'Victorious Leader' Siyad) and the sinister National Security Service shared the task of ensuring that this elaborate propaganda rhetoric fell on receptive ears. The repeatedly proclaimed objective was to replace archaic, divisive lineage loyalty, by productive revolutionary allegiance to the nation. The National Security Courts also spared no effort in their zeal to enforce the new order of revolutionary nationalism. l

The Rhetoric of Revolution in Babel''s Konarmija

The Rhetoric of Revolution in Babel''s Konarmija

Remarques Critiques Sur La Linguistique Américaine Et Son Historiographie

Critical Remarks on American Linguistics and its Hitoriography The paper argues that, contrary to recent accounts offered as definitive history of the development of linguistic theory in North America, the 1950s witnessed much more of a continuity than the alleged discontinuity and break with the past. Indeed, it is suggested that a scientific revolution in the Kuhnian sense did not take place following the publication of Syntactic Structures in 1957, but that essential ingredients of transformational theory had been available in post-Bloomfieldian circles (of which Chomsky was a part) from the late 1940s onwards. Zellig S. Harris' "Transfer Grammar" and Charles F. Hockett's "Two Models of Grammatical Description", both published in 1954 (though developed several years earlier), are cited as just two instances in which a générative model of language processing was proposed. Moreover, it is suggested that Noam Chomsky, Morris Halle, and their associates had engaged, from early on, in 'revolutionary rhetoric' (Stephen Murray) which, for social, economic, and other reasons, produced the impression of a paradigm change in the minds of many of the younger generation at the time, where in effect little else than a further articulation of a structuralist conception of language took place.

Language and politics: A comparative analysis of revolutionary rhetoric of regime leaders and power contenders in Ethiopia between 1974 and 1977 : Negash, Girma, University of Colorado at Boulder, 1982.

Language and politics: A comparative analysis of revolutionary rhetoric of regime leaders and power contenders in Ethiopia between 1974 and 1977 : Negash, Girma, University of Colorado at Boulder, 1982.

Thermidor in America: The Aftermath of Independence in the South

In the first flush of independence, while most Americans celebrated their success at arms against the English, Benjamin Rush remained more guarded. “The American war is over,” he reminded his countrymen, “but this is far from being the case with the American Revolution.”Rush's assertion was an arresting one at the time, and in an attenuated way its insight persists in the work that currently affords us our paradigmatic account of the Revolutionary movement. For Bernard Bailyn extends it to argue, in a succession of brilliant studies, that the ideas set loose in the struggle for independence had a logical momentum all their own. He has traced what he calls the “transforming radicalism of the American Revolution” to fruitions far beyond the conflict with England, and he affirms the fundamentality for all American history of the continuing “contagion of liberty” that originated in Revolutionary rhetoric.

The Rhetoric of Revolution in France

The Rhetoric of Revolution in France

The Transatlantic Background of Thomas Jefferson's Ideas of Executive Power

The Transatlantic Background of Thomas Jefferson's Ideas of Executive Power RALPH KETCHAM The years 1689 and 1789, far from being times of "settlement" in AngloAmerica , were in fact moments of uncertain, even unprecedented begin­ ning, especially in the prospects for the exercise of executive power. In En­ gland in 1689, with Stuart notions of "divine right" rule undermined and the foundations of parliamentary government in place, the ideas of a lim­ ited, constitutional monarchy, and of a "prime" minister, to be so admired by Montesquieu, seemed ready for trial in one of Europe's most powerful nations. A century later in the United States, rather than everything being settled by the inauguration of government under the new constitution, Washington had to give form and meaning to a general phrase: "The exec­ utive power shall be vested in a President." What did it mean, especially in a republic born amid passionate denunciations of monarchy, to be an executive? What conceptions, guidelines, and models were available to the first presidents? Their peculiar problem, of course, was to devise an executive office suited to republican principles when virtually all prece­ dent and experience associated executive power with hereditary monarchy — and even monarchical practices of executive power were undergoing fundamental reconsideration in the former mother country. The quandaries and uncertainties were felt with peculiar force by the third president, Thomas Jefferson, both because he was especially deter­ 163 164 / KETCHAM mined to be faithful to the republicanism of the Revolution, and because he was profoundly aware of the crosscurrents of political ideas then swirl­ ing in the Western World. He revealed some of the intellectual dilemmas he had worked within when in 1821, to his grandson s request for an opin­ ion of Thomas Paine and Lord Bolingbroke, he replied that "both were honest men; both advocates for human liberty. . . . Bolingbroke was called indeed a Tory, but his writings prove him a stronger advocate for liberty than any of his countrymen, the Whigs of the present day."1 How is it that the radical Paine and the Tory Bolingbroke could seem equally defenders of liberty, each esteemed more than Whig parliamentarians? Are there assumptions and aspirations about republican government and leadership buried in Jefferson's evaluation of Paine and Bolingbroke that, properly understood, might shed light on the origins of the American presidency? Bolingbroke's view, reflecting almost every tradition known to Jefferson and other eighteenth-century Anglo-Americans, was that bad leadership would corrupt the body politic, while responsibility for re­ newal of its strength and virtue rested with a patriot king, a monarch akin to Shakespeare's idealized Henry V. But who could take this vital role in a republic founded amid revolutionary rhetoric that stigmatized a reigning king as "the Royal Brute of Great Britain"? In the presence of this di­ lemma, a critical question arose again and again for Jefferson and the other early presidents: what could take the place in a republic of the enor­ mously important symbol and reality in a monarchy of the leadership of the whole realm by the sovereign?2 This dilemma imposed complex, perhaps insoluble problems on Jeffer­ son, of course, but it was also the source of a tension that led to his most creative thinking about institutions and political leadership. If we look only at the pastoral, provincial, culturally conservative Jefferson, or only at the radical apostle of democracy, science, and a new society, we may find much to condemn or to admire or to ponder, but we miss the real sig­ nificance of his thought and career. He was, in fact, deeply aware of a cul­ tural and moral crisis in western civilization, with which he struggled all his life. He revered ancient traditions of moral unity, community, and po­ litical obligation, but he was also an Enlightenment republican committed to human freedom, to removal of restraints, and to government by con­ sent. His public career, and especially his conception and use of executive power, were rich and profound precisely because he clung to both of these patterns, emphasizing at times (especially during the American Revolu­ tion) the more republican, liberalizing elements, but at other times — and particularly as he...

An assessment of agricultural development policies in Iran

Agricultural development policies in Iran for the past two decades have been based on important misconceptions derived from a dualistic analysis of the economy. The government concentrated on the development of the ‘dynamic’ oil and industrial sector at the expense of the ‘static’ rural sector. As a result Iranian self-sufficiency in food and agricultural produce has been seriously eroded and the country has become increasingly dependent on the international market both in terms of importing foodstuffs and in gaining its main income through the export of a single item: oil. The present government's attempts at alleviating this problem should extend beyond revolutionary rhetoric and blanket policies and return the means of production to the cultivator and encourage the emergence of a peasant-based and independent agricultural sector.

The "Liberty or Death" Speech: A Note on Religion and Revolutionary Rhetoric

O N March 23, I775, Patrick Henry delivered an oration so powerful that Colonel Edward Carrington, standing outside the Henrico church and listening through an open window, reportedly exclaimed, Right here I wish to be buried-a desire his widow later satisfied. Another listener remembered feeling sick with excitement.1 In I 8 I 6, William Wirt, soon to be appointed attorney general of the United States, published what purports to be that speech, a short, trenchant excursus on British perfidy and the necessity for armed resistance that culminates in the famous words me liberty, or give me death!2

Jack London on the Road: The Tramp Diary and Other Hobo Writings ed. by Richard W. Etulain

58 Western American Literature Jack London on the Road: The Tramp Diary and Other Hobo Writings. Edited by Richard W. Etulain. (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1979. 209 pages, $7.50.) Jack London wrote one classic book about tramping in America. The Road (1907) is a series of autobiographical travel episodes which are perhaps less strictly factual accounts of journeying than they are short stories in the first person. The narrative is out of sequence, but the narrator is never out of temper or out of interesting anecdotes. Traveller, storyteller, and picaresque hero, London creates a “last frontier” along the railroad track, the iron road which he himself had followed from west to east in 1894, when he had exchanged the life of a factory “work beast” in Oakland, California, for the presumably carefree existence of an easy-riding, hardliving hobo. In truth, he simply exchanged one ordeal for another. The track which Pilgrim London pursued ran through a nation of urban-industrial growth that left precious little room for latter-day pioneers to wander. London had few illusions about what he would find over the Sierras and across the Plains. The buffalo had ceased to roam, the West was a dime novel, the Indians were under house arrest on disease-ridden reservations, and the country was gripped by hard times and high unemploy­ ment in the aftermath of the Panic of 1893. The wonder is that London put far more of his youthful high spirits than social criticism in The Road, but the absence of revolutionary rhetoric is only one of the curiosities of the book. Somehow, it still has the power to charm its reader. The freshness and sheer ebullience of the writing more than compensate for the scrambled narrative sequence, while the “distaste­ fulness” which offended the critics of 1907 strikes us today as mere local color (“The hobo,” editor Richard Etulain reminds us, “was not an inspiring subject for teenage girls and coffee-table books — two of the unrefutable tests for measuring acceptable fiction in the last years of the nineteenth century”). With the decline of the nation’s railroad and tramp population, the book has, of course, acquired an added nostalgic value, an evocation of a lost world as alien and exotic in its own way as London’s Klondike or Polynesia. And what of London’s other hobo writings? Do they possess the same vigor and vitality as the selections of The Road? Surprisingly, they do not. In collecting all of London’s diary, essay, and short fiction writing about tramps and tramping, Etulain has made an interesting discovery: once out of the autobiographical form, London was lost, unable to transmute his experiences into art. The only convincinglydrawn hobo London ever portrayed was himself, and that fact sets Etulain off on a number of cogent inquiries: “Why was he not able to produce writing about his road experiences that matched the high quality of his works on the Klondike? Was it that editors and readers were reluctant to accept the hobo? Did he lack sufficient artistic versatility to portray believ­ able tramp heroes?” Reviews 59 These and other questions need to be asked, and it is to Etulain’s great credit that he both offers and answers them. I personally find his conclu­ sions as impeccable as his research and editing. Certainly, he provides enough textual evidence for us to make a reasoned and informed judgment about London’s failure to create a memorable fictional tramp. Given the book’s modest price, its attractive cover (of a railroad track curving into the distance), the fact that it establishes for the first time the canon of London’s road writing, and that both its contents and editorial comments are a valuable resource, Jack London on the Road is a truly original and indispensable addition to the shelf of essential Londoniana. Etulain is to be congratulated for the fine detective work which has enabled him to solve one of the most puzzling riddles of Jack London’s writing career. HOWARD LACHTMAN University of the Pacific Jacob Hamblin: Mormon Apostle to the Indians. By Juanita Brooks. (Salt Lake City: Westwater Press, 1980.) Sixshooters and Sagebrush: Cowboy...

Recent Political Change in Korea

L aswell's well-known definition of politics-Who gets what, when, and how-usefully emphasizes what really happens in the affairs of nations, as contrasted with morals or political theory.1 What really happens is determined by the political culture of a people and their leaders-the shared set of beliefs, attitudes, and values about what is important, what can be tolerated, and how people go about getting what they want. It is rare, even in the most literate societies, to find very much of the actual system written down; it exists chiefly in the minds of the people involved. What does get written down tends to be ideal and aspiration, not reality, and reality is condemned by the ideal. Socalled political change is often superficial and transitory, like ripples on the surface of a pond. A leader may seize power and change all the leading political personalities; but even if he does so to the accompaniment of fiery revolutionary rhetoric, the basic political system is likely to go on pretty much as it has been. A new constitution may be proclaimed, but it has little effect in and of itself. The beliefs, attitudes, and values of a people change very slowly, and political behavior is therefore similarly slow to change. Everyone knows from personal experience how painful it is to change long-established ways of thinking and doing-how profoundly disturbing to see cherished values and understandings disputed and discredited. Even in revolutionary times, there is likely to be more

On Economic and Social Policy in China: A Report by Hua Kuo-feng

On 26 February 1978, Chairman Hua Kuo-feng of the People's Republic of China delivered a report on the work of the Government at the First Session of the Fifth National People's Congress. The report-entitled, Unite and Strive to Build a Modern Powerful Socialist Country!-is a mixture of revolutionary rhetoric and programmatic delineation. In addition to detailed discussion of political issues, both internal and international, the report provides an insight into the substantial changes in economic and social policy in China since the death of Mao Tse-tung and gives a blueprint for rapid economic development in the coming years. The report stresses the primacy of the agricultural sector, discusses an ambitious industrialization program, and deals with the related issues of economic management, work incentives, and income distribution. The excerpts reproduced below are from Sections 3 (Speed Up Socialistic Economic Construction) and 4 (Develop Socialist Science, Education, and Culture). They amount to a concise statement of key issues of economic and social policy as seen by the leadership of post-Mao China. As the quoted passages suggest, the tone is heavily exhortative, and discussions of problems of feasibility and implementation are largely missing. Targets that are spelled out in specific quantitative terms are relatively scarce in the report. Conspicuous emphasis on the importance of rapid agricultural development culminates in the setting of a grain-production target of 400 million tons by 1985. This implies an increase of some 40 percent above current levels and an annual rate of increase substantially above average performance during the last 20 years. Direct

The Justice of America's Cause: Revolutionary Rhetoric in the Sermons of Samuel Cooper

GEORGE WASHINGTON once observed that Thomas Paine's Common Sense, attacking monarchy and King George III, worked a powerful change... in the minds of many men.' The change was indeed great, but many Americans needed more than arguments stressing the expediency of separation to plunge them into revolution. They had to be convinced that the decrees of both reason and religion dictated this drastic step, so they turned to the ministers of the gospel for guidance. The ministers, however, not disinterested spectators. According to the Loyalist historian Peter Oliver, James Otis had early advanced one shrewd Position, which seldom fails to promote popular Commotions, vizt that it was necessary to secure the black Regiment,... to engage the dissenting Clergy on his Side. Oliver observed that the Congregational ministers of Massachusetts took an active part in stirring up resistance against Britain, and he credited the Boston clergy, who were esteemed by the others as an Order of Deities, with exerting great influence over their country brethren. Although Oliver charged that most of the clergymen either dupes of the patriot leaders or servants to the popular will, he admitted that some, indeed, ... particularly Doctors Chauncy 8c Cooper, ... among the ministers, might be considered as influencing the people, rather than being influenced by them; and they generally supposed to be con-

Political Economy and Reality: Problems in the Interpretation of the American Revolution

There are two theories on the subject of "Political Economy"1 and the ideological origins of the American Revolution, both put forward by members of the "Ideological School," and both false. The first holds that economic considera- tions have little place in any ideological interpretation of the colonial rebellion against the mother country. The second, and adverse, theory holds that economic developments are central to any explanation of revolutionary rhetoric and be- havior.

Early Proslavery Petitions in Virginia

With the recent emphasis on the history of the black man in America, historians of the Revolutionary and early national period have given greater attention to the national antislavery movement in that era. Although the South did not match the North's success in realizing the Revolutionary rhetoric by emancipating its slaves, it has been generally assumed that southern opinion, especially in Virginia, found slavery, at least in theory, repugnant to the ideals of the Revolution. Southern leaders like Jefferson and Madison were optimistic that with time the South would be able to free itself from the recognized evil. Historians have accepted the opinion that in practice most southerners simply acquiesced in the existing labor system. For example, Winthrop Jordan, Gerald Mullin, and Robert McColley state that in the post-Revolutionary era Virginians neither attacked nor defended slavery.' According to Jordan, No one in the South stood up in public to endorse Negro slavery during the Revolutionary period.2 The petitions presented below, submitted to the October I784 and I785 sessions of the Virginia legislature, contradict the view that all Virginians refrained from defending slavery. Jordan does provide examples of northern endorsements, but when they are compared with the Virginia petitions, they show that the Virginians did not in this instance borrow from the North. The northerners asserted the inferiority of Negroes; their argument revolved around the problems of inherent nature versus environmentalism. Virginians only implied Negro inferiority; their petitions exhibit an extensive scriptural defense that received only slight attention from the northerners who dwelt on Enlightenment reasoning in their attempt to provide a scientific rationalization for the existence of slavery.8

A Note on the Comparative Study of the Structure of Politics in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain and Its American Colonies

T t HE current debate between Prof. Bernard Bailyn and Prof. Jack Greene raises at least two important questions.' First, what in the order and practice of colonial American politics made it virtually impossible for the British crown to retain the obedience of its American subjects? Second, can a comparative approach to that question yield any truly satisfying answer? Both historians seem to agree that a just construction of the legal relationship between America and Britain in the mid-eighteenth century would not have been sufficient to maintain imperial harmony and American dependence. Except for Charles McIlwain and Bernhard Knollenberg, no leading twentieth-century historian has seriously argued that Americans were provoked to seek independence because Britain violated America's legal status within the empire. Most historians simply recount, without supporting, the revolutionary rhetoric of the Founding Fathers about their having initially sought not newfangled American privileges, but just the old legitimate rights of individual Englishmen. We are no longer anxious to blame Britain, but we are still unwilling to blame ourselves for the breaking of the good old law. Instead, we admit our interested motives, consider them a legitimate but not sufficient cause for separation, and then seek to identify the ideological road on which, willynilly, we drove ourselves towards independence. Was the road to independence the one that Charles Andrews and Jack

The renewal of the social and cultural environment

The word renewal connotes the wish to replace the old and outworn-to start afresh. The resulting imagery, value judgments and conceptualizations lead easily to an emphasis on structures stripped of their history and torn out of their continuing process. They also lead to a discussion of social change in the rhetoric of revolution. The pressure from various contemporary youth cultures, as well as that from other groups, makes it difficult for education to insist calmly and confidently that any significant renewal of society must conserve existing values and social institutions while resourcefully and effectively changing them. To the existential revolutionaries-those for whom revolutionary action is a form of psychodrama or ritualistic combat without serious program-a combination of conservation with effective change is an absurdity. From those with reformist objectives, determined to join Rudi Dutschke's long march through the institutions, the most charitable response will be the accusation of co-optation by the establishment. But it should be obvious that the quality of the social environment is apt to be renewed if citizens directly and effectively participate in social, economic and politial processes. Nevertheless, existing values and institutions must be conserved as they change: indeed, they must be conserved and secured in order that they may change. These assertions are prelude to a consideration of the characteristics of the social surround as it affects individual fulfillment, competence, meaning, effectiveness and gratification. Too frequently, ecological problems are discussed not in biosocial terms but in terms of the biophysical interrelations between organisms and their environment.