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Lundberg, Christian

Published by The University of Alabama Press

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Introduction
Lacans Uncanny Rhetoric

This book is as much an argument for a conception of rhetor ic as it is a reading of Jacques Lacans interpretation of it. While I will argue that there are
elements of Lacans work that one cannot fully grasp without understanding
his reliance on the rhetorical traditions, in the pages that follow I would also
like to highlight the ways that Lacans corpus engages in a significant reconfiguration of the traditions of rhetoric. The goal of Lacans intervention
into the rhetorical traditions is ambitious: he would like to take to task a vision of discourse situated within an increasingly complex but nevertheless
fundamentally Aristotelian conception of rhetor ic as the exchange of meanings between interlocutors in a given situation. This conception not only
holds rhetorical action to be intelligible exclusively in the light of a given
context but is ultimately reducible to the interplay of meaning, context, and
propriety. As an alternative, Lacan calls rhetor ic both to return to a focus on
the formal properties of discourse and to theorize the constitutive function
of the limit of rhetoric. I will not argue here that rhetor ic should abandon
its Aristotelian roots: instead, I would like to locate the Aristotelian tradition
of rhetorical interpretation within a broader conception of rhetor ic, arguing for attention to trope and investment as a means of locating and refigur
ing rhetorics character.
In retheorizing rhetor ic, Lacan engages pivotal figures (Aristotle, Cicero,
and Quintilian) and topoi (the oratorical tradition, the power of trope, stasis
theory, and questions of contingency and context) in the rhetorical traditions. But Lacans commitment to rhetor ic extends beyond mere citation: in
declaring that the psychoanalyst is a rhetor, Lacan refuses to separate the
practices and fortunes of the two traditions.1 This is why it is so surprising
that rhetorical studies has not paid more attention to Lacans work. Part of
rhetorical studies reticence to embrace Lacan likely stems from the substantial investment required to read his work: it is famously difficult, often bordering on the impenetrable. But it seems to me that there is more at play in

xii / Introduction

rhetorical studies lukewarm reception of Lacans work than the difficulties

involved in reading it: there is also something foreign about the way Lacan inflects rhetor ic, rendering it in an accent that does not always sit well with the
American traditions of rhetor ic in composition and communication studies.
This foreign accent affords rhetorical studies an opportunity to reevaluate
its received wisdom by encountering a vision of rhetor ic that upsets and extends the practices of American rhetorical studies. A number of arguments
that I forward on the basis of Lacans theory of rhetor ic upset hallowed maxims in rhetorical studies: articulating rhetor ic and communication together
fundamentally disfigures rhetoric; rhetor ic is more science than art; rhetor ic
is not premised on the reciprocal exchange of meanings but on the impossibility of such an exchange; and finally, rhetor ic never achieves adequation
with the world. There is also an uncanny affinity to rhetorics conventional
wisdom in Lacans work. For Lacan, one cannot understand discourse or the
human condition without understanding them rhetorically. To account for
human discourse, Lacan claims, one must attend to categories at the heart of
the rhetorical traditions: to speech, addressivity, and the generative power
of tropes. Lacan frequently reaffirms the rhetorical traditions almost to the
letter, for example, in his reading of Aristotles stasis, Quintilians theory
of trope, and of ancient oratorys pedagogical practices. Where he does not
agree with the letter of the rhetorical traditions, Lacan invariably affirms
their spirit.
Chapter 1 takes up the theme of failed unicity, which forms the starting point for Lacans theory of rhetoric. I argue that Lacans theory of discourse ought not to be framed as a structuralist poetics but as a rhetorical
theory of the circulation of tropes and affects in an economy of discourse. In
situating this intervention, I engage a number of contemporary sites where
the question of Lacans relationship to rhetor ic emerges, including the traditions of communication and composition studies, comparative literature,
and political theory. In chapter 2, I focus on the theme of locating rhetoric.
I begin by figuring the location of rhetor ic in the contemporary rhetori
cal traditions, suggesting the Lacanian triad Real, Symbolic, and Imaginary
as a schema for mapping the varied functions often conflated under the all-
encompassing rubric of rhetoric. Next, I turn to a number of exemplary moments in Lacans corpus where he explicitly engages the question of rheto
ric, with the goal of laying the foundation for a systematic rhetorical theory
drawn from his work. Chapter 2 concludes with a provocation that reflects
on Lacans injunction to wring the neck of rhetoric.
Chapter 3 begins with Lacans argument for disarticulating speech and
communication, presenting a conception of rhetor ic that centers on speech

Introduction / xiii

but that disavows an intrinsic connection between rhetor ic and communication. Moving through treatments of Lacans theories of meaning and the unconscious, this chapter is organized around a reading of Lacans Schema L,
which reveals the way that a commitment to rhetor ic as the intersubjective
exchange of meanings occludes the symbolic charge in language. Chapter 3
concludes with a treatment of Lacans call to understand rhetor ic as a science,
exploring the implications of his declaration that oratory was not simply an
art but a science organized around an account of the formal properties of language.
Chapter 4 extends Lacans call for a science of rhetor ic by defining an
economy of trope as the central object of a science of oratory. I begin by posing Lacans conception of trope against the predominant characterizations of
the formal properties of language in rhetorical studies, followed by an interpretation of the functions of metaphor and metonymy in Lacans work from
the dual perspectives of the formal properties of trope and the economy of
affective investment that underwrites them. Finally, taking up the relationship between tuch and automaton, I argue for Lacans conception of a rhe
torical economy of discourse as opposed to a structuralist account of form,
concluding with a provocation regarding rhetorical reading practices.
Chapter 5 introduces the character of Lacans Real as the limit of rheto
ric, focusing on the means by which rhetorical action negotiates this limit. I
suggest Lacans conception of enjoyment as a specific affective modality that
lends durability to processes of signification. Specifically, I engage debates
surrounding the materiality of rhetoric thesis to argue for enjoyment as a
material practice in the context of immediation between the orders of discourse and that which is external to it. Chapter 5 concludes with a provocation on the materiality of rhetor ic by posing the question of the relationship
between theory and practice against the backdrop of failed unicity and specifically in the context of the impossibility of signification as reference.
If rhetor ic is characterized by the work of trope and enjoyment as a mode
of affective investment, it also requires an account of publics as privileged
sites for the economic interchange between trope and enjoyment. In chapter
6, I take up the character of the publ ic in Lacans work, arguing that the pub
lic is the primary site at which Lacan conceives of the production of subjects
and their discourses. Specifically, I argue that theorists of the public might
profitably parse the processes through which publics are made into three distinct analytical categories on the basis of Lacans work, distinguishing between the ontological, addressive, and identitarian functions of the public
as a site of tropological and affective exchange. I conclude the chapter with
a provocation on rhetorical praxis as a mode of consensus or identification,

xiv / Introduction

posing the dual problems of violence and stasis to consensually orient conception of publ ic making.
In chapter 7 I take up two specific sites of tropological exchange. Reading two very different discoursesthe imaginary economy of conservative
American Christian evangelical publics and the demands of antiglobalization protestorsI hope to demonstrate the productivity of a conception of
rhetor ic that fully attends to its formal and affective charges in public life.
Though these discursive fields undoubtedly admit other readings and might
be fruitfully engaged employing other critical protocols, they lay out one
possible trajectory for a scientific practice of rhetorical criticism that attends
to the messy intersections of trope and persuasion in the economy of publ ic
discourses. In place of a provocation in chapter 7, I conclude the book with
a brief postscript on recovering the prophetic, ornamental, and protreptic
strands in the rhetorical traditions.

Lacan in Public