Rhetorical Maneuvers: Subjectivity, Power, and Resistance

Kendall R. Phillips

Philosophy & Rhetoric, Volume 39, Number 4, 2006, pp. 310-332 (Article)

Published by Penn State University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/par.2007.0005

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https://muse.jhu.edu/article/210782

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Rhetorical Maneuvers:
Subjectivity, Power, and Resistance

Kendall R. Phillips

A sense of subjectivity as fluid, dynamic, and multiple has become almost or-
thodox throughout the humanities. The widespread influence of poststructural
thought has seemingly routed earlier Enlightenment notions of a unified, tran-
scendent subject and opened the door for critical approaches to the numerous
and changing manifestations of human subjectivity. The fluidity of the human
subject, however, is not without its bounds or constraints. Indeed, the same line
of poststructural thinking that served to de-center the Enlightenment subject,
especially the work of Michel Foucault, also stipulated that the subject was
positioned by larger formations of discourse over which they had limited if
any control. These two sides of poststructural subjectivity—its fluidity and its
positioning—establish not so much two divergent approaches, but the two poles
between which the human subject can be thought to operate. In turn the two
poles of the apparent fixity of the subject position and the seeming fluidity of the
subjectivity manifested within that position suggest the kind of productive ten-
sion through which we are simultaneously limited and enabled by the discourse
formations within which we operate and against which we, at times, resist.
This productive tension between the multiplicity of the subject and the
singularity of the subject position has, of course, been the focus of numerous
inquiries. In his later work, Foucault attended to the processes by which the
subject makes itself an object upon which work might be done and urged a more
aesthetic approach to the continuous crafting of the self.1 Along similar lines,
Judith Butler has conceived of the subject in terms of its performativity and
the ways that the “I” is crafted through numerous and fluid citations of existing
power relations. Conceived in this way, the notion of the “self” is a constantly
changing object crafted and re-crafted out of the points of identification provided
in the exterior fields of power and knowledge. These points of identification, in
turn, provide symbolic anchors by which a subject is moored, at least temporar-
ily, into a particular subject position within which they become identifiable and
intelligible in terms of the broader formation of discourse.

Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 39, No. 4, 2006.

Copyright © 2006 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

310
 RHETORICAL MANEUVERS 311

In addition to posing a serious challenge to Enlightenment philosophy, this

conception of the self as fluid and dynamic presents some vexing questions con-
cerning the practices of self and the capacity of a subject to offer any meaningful
challenge to the formations of discourse that constitute its existence. As Butler
puts the problem, “The paradox of subjectivation (assujetissement) is precisely
that the subject who would resist such norms is itself enabled, if not produced,
by such norms” (1993, 15). The theoretical concerns over the relationship be-
tween agency and subjectivity also impact upon a series of political questions
surrounding the nature and possibility of identity politics and recent debates
concerning the importance and efficacy of gaining “recognition” as a political
move.2 Whatever one’s position within such debates, it is clear that the question
of subjectivity and its concomitant questions of subjectivation and agency must
be addressed in order to conceive of any kinds of democratic politics.
The question of the subject, then, clearly entails broad philosophical and
political implications. Rhetorical scholars have entered this conversation with
a particular concern for the practices that both constitute and challenge the
constitution of the self and many of these scholars have attended specifically
to the points of friction between prescribed positions in which a subject is con-
stituted and the dynamic nature of subjectivity as performed. Following from
the works of Foucault, Barbara Biesecker (1992), for instance, urges attention
to the canon of style as a crucially rhetorical element in the processes by which
the individual negotiates relations of power, knowledge, and subjectivity. In a
similar vein, Bradford Vivian draws from the works of Gilles Deleuze and Felix
Guattari to suggest that rhetoricians recognize “that the self may be conceived
as a form—a rhetorical form—that exists only in its continual and aesthetic
creation, in its indefinite becoming” (2000, 304). The indefinite nature of this
becoming is, for both Vivian and Deleuze and Guattari, a politically crucial
insight into the ways that subject form becomes not a trap within which the self
is necessarily confined but a potentially creative resource through which new
senses of self may emerge.
The present article seeks to make a modest contribution to this expansive
body of theory by pressing the question of how the multiplicity of the subject is
practiced or, to phrase it as a driving question, what kinds of procedures might
be employed to turn the tensions that exist between subject-multiplicity and
subject-positioning into a rhetorical resource? How does, we might ask, one
speak from one’s sense of multiplicity and how does multiplicity emerge within
the everyday practices of self? Theoretically it is clear that the tension between
fluidity of multiplicity and the seeming fixedness of positionality informs daily
312 KENDALL R. PHILLIPS

practices of the self but, what remains to be more fully explored are the kinds of
procedures by which this tension is manifested within everyday practices.
Undoubtedly, there are numerous ways in which this tension is manifested
and in the present essay I seek to inquire into the specific procedures of one such
manifestation, which I call a rhetorical maneuver. In the simplest terms, the
rhetorical maneuver is performed at those moments when we choose to violate
the proscriptive limits of our subject position and speak differently by drawing
upon the resources of another subject position we have occupied: for example,
when the corporate CEO speaks as a mother, or when the university professor
speaks as a Latino. As I will elaborate in the following pages, this is a rhetori-
cal movement in which one violates the constraints of one subject position by
articulating the discourse more appropriate to another subject position. While
this is only one way in which the tension between subject position and subject
multiplicity is performed, it seems an intriguingly familiar example and, as such,
warrants a more thorough examination. In order to facilitate the unpacking of
this specific procedure, I begin this essay by laying out some of the relevant
theoretical literature concerning subjectivity and then, in order to attend more
closely to its everyday practice, I map the rhetorical maneuver along lines of-
fered by Michel de Certeau in his influential book, The Practice of Everyday
Life. Following this explication of the procedures of the rhetorical maneuver,
I return to the broader theoretical and critical concerns over subjectivity by of-
fering some implications.

Subjectivity Positioned and Performed

The underlying tension I attend to in this essay is captured by Stuart

Hall, who writes, “The subject assumes different identities at different times,
identities which are not unified around a coherent ‘self.’ Within us are contra-
dictory identities, pulling in different directions, so that our identifications are
continually being shifted around” (1996a, 277). For Hall, these identifications
are the points of contact between the subject and the broader discourses, or as
he contends, identity is:

The point of suture, between on the one hand the discourses and practices which
attempt to “interpellate,” speak to us our hail us into place as the social subjects of
particular discourse, and on the other hand, the processes which produce subjectivi-
ties, which construct us as subjects which can be “spoken.” Identities are thus the
 RHETORICAL MANEUVERS 313

points of temporary attachment to the subject positions which discursive practices

construct for us. (1996b, 5–6)

While I chose to not pursue Hall’s psychoanalytic understanding of these

points of identification, it is worth observing the tension between the multiplic-
ity of “identities” carried by a subject and the positioning of that subject by a
seemingly unified and coherent position within which they become authorized
to speak and act.
Subjectivity, conceived in this way, is always a tension between the
positioning carried out by the formations of discourse within which we act and
the fluid multiplicity of subjectivity against which such positions are employed.
On the one hand, the subject comes to act by being positioned within broader
and impersonal systems of discourse and these positions, in turn, help to craft
one’s sense of self. Vivian makes the point that, “discourse creates subjects by
first creating subject positions from which to speak” (2000, 313). These enabling
discourses, in turn, as Sarah Tracy and Angela Tretheway observe, “work to
‘fix’ identities in particular ways that favor some interests over others and thus
constrain alternative truths and subject positions” (2005, 171).
On the other hand, even though limited through its positioning within
discourse, subjectivity remains indeterminate and is always in the unpredict-
able process of becoming. The discourses that serve to fix subjectivity into a
particular subject position, as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe observe, can
provide only a partial fix (1985, 111). The inability of discourse to provide a
final, fixed and unchangeable subject position is due, in part, to the disjuncture
between various formations of discourse and the dispersion of subject positions
across these various discourses. Instability is introduced into these discourse
formations by the movement of the subject from one discursively constructed
position to another. As we move between discourses—and, thus, between subject
positions—we carry with us the alternative subject positions and discourses and
through our movement introduce a degree of instability, an unfixed-ness, into the
different subject positions we occupy. On this point, Vivian insists that in order
to understand the fluidity of subjectivity, “we must assert the movement—the
process—of becoming and the encounter with difference it creates” (2000, 307).
The movement of individuals among and between subject positions is essential
to conceive of subjectivity as fluid and dynamic.
Crucial to understanding the potential of this movement in terms of the
fluid nature of subjectivity and the partially fixed character of subject positions—
and to the larger point of the present essay—is the conception of subjectivity as
the taking on of various forms. Our conception of self, as Vivian defines it, is
314 KENDALL R. PHILLIPS

created through the adoption and crafting of various forms of self (311). Foucault
makes this point when contending that the practices by which a subject crafts
their sense of self “are nevertheless not something that the individual invents by
himself. They are patterns that he finds in his culture and which are proposed,
suggested and imposed on him by his culture, his society and his social group”
(1994, 11). The instability of discourse, however, prevents this “imposition”
from being complete and the movement of the subject provides a crucial space
in which an element of creativity can be introduced. Felix Guattari provides a
useful metaphor for thinking about this relationship when he notes, “One creates
new modalities of subjectivity in the same way that an artist creates new forms
from the palette” (1995, 7). In this metaphor the subject-as-artist is afforded
a level of creativity but only in so far as new forms can be derived from the
“palette,” which is presumably made up of previously encountered forms.
It is worth observing here the interrelationship between positions of sub-
jectivity and the forms afforded the subject. Any given subject position provides
a position in a broader formation of discourse within which a subject is afforded
a kind of social existence, a position of intelligibility within a formation of dis-
course and, subsequently, some degree of agency within that discourse. These
subject positions also provide a recognized and recognizable form of subjectiv-
ity appropriate to that subject position. In other words, a subject position is an
intelligible place within a broader formation of discourse, while a subject form
is that recognizable pattern of performance attached to a given position. Ken-
neth Burke’s notion of form as the creation of expectations and their fulfillment
is appropriate for thinking about the way that a given subject position creates
the expectation that one will perform in a way that subsequently satisfies this
expectation.3 The position of a university professor, in other words, may have
a degree of latitude in its expectations but there are some apparently obligatory
expectations—attending classes, giving grades, etc.
As noted above, the apparently indissoluble link between a given sub-
ject position and its appropriate subject form is not as fixed and necessary as it
may appear. The movement of a subject between various positions provides a
potential for disruption. Here we might combine Guattari’s “creative palette”
metaphor with Foucault’s more dire observation about the imposition of pat-
terns of self. The subject’s movement between various forms of self, imposed
upon it in the different positions it inhabits, ultimately provides a “palette” of
multiple patterns of self. This palette of acquired forms, in turn, provides one
of the important conditions for the creation of new senses of self. Following
the interrelationship of subject form and subject position it seems likely that if
one is able to alter the form of one’s subjectivity within a given formation of
 RHETORICAL MANEUVERS 315

discourse, then one will affect one’s subject position within that discourse as
well. Potentially, this alteration of subject position may affect the broader con-
stellation of the discourse formation as well. In other words, to challenge one’s
own intelligibility within a network of relations that render one intelligible is
to potentially proffer not only a challenge to one’s sense of self but also to the
disciplinary networks that seek to position one. It is a challenge to the points
and practices of identification through, to borrow from Butler, the institution
of a “disidentification.”
Challenges to points of identification that anchor one within a given sub-
ject position reveal the interdependency of the subject position and the subject
who performs within that position. It is not merely the case that the position
enables the performance but, importantly, the performing subject perpetuates
the existence and contours of the position within which it performs. In turn,
performances that violate the expectations of a given subject position will un-
dermine the points of identification of the position itself. As Butler notes, “it is
not the case that a ‘subject-position’ preexists the enunciation that it occasions,
for certain kinds of enunciations dismantle the very ‘subject positions’ by which
they are ostensibly enabled” (1993, 100, 114).
Taken as an abstract theoretical principle, the notion of the creative sub-
ject drawing on prior forms of subjectivity in order to challenge their position
within a formation of discourse and reform it seems sensible. What remain to
be explored are the kinds of procedures through which this reconstruction is
performed. In this regard, rhetoricians seem uniquely positioned to explore these
kinds of re-formations of subjectivity given that such procedures may entail
not only the deployment of discourse but the invention of new positions within
discourse. In the end, the positioning and re-positioning of a subject within a
broader formation of discourse is always a matter of explicit behaviors. One is
positioned by discourse into a position from which one can speak, but one also
actively participates in this positioning by performing those functions prescribed
to that position. In turn, one can reposition oneself through the kinds of things
one says and does. Thus, positioning and repositioning are active processes and
in order to more fully grasp the complexity of these processes rhetorical schol-
ars need a set of terminology. The theoretical language currently available to
rhetorical scholars pursuing these procedures is rich, as is demonstrated above,
but also remarkably abstract.
In the remainder of this essay, I suggest a conception of one procedure
through which a subject attempts to reconfigure her/his position. At the root of
this concept is the notion of “speaking out of place”—or, what happens when
one speaks the discourse appropriate to a different subject position. This seems
316 KENDALL R. PHILLIPS

a particular manifestation of the classical notion of catachresis, the improper

use of a word or stretching of a metaphor. More recently catachresis has been
employed by scholars like Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Butler to capture the
ways that those who are erased from a form of discourse, such as the colonized
within the discourse of colonialism or the feminine within the discourse of
patriarchy, re-emerge in odd terms. As Butler puts it, catachresis entails “those
figures that function improperly, as an improper transfer of sense, the use of a
proper name to describe that which does not properly belong to it.”4
The rhetorical maneuver is a particular variation on this concept because
it involves, in a way, the improper use of proper name. But in this particular
case, the rhetorical maneuver involves the importation of a “proper name” (or
subject form) from another formation of discourse and into a discursive position
for which this “proper name” is somehow inappropriate. Such mis-naming of
one’s self, in turn, challenges the contours of the subject position and the proper
subject form it encourages.
While some conception of self-naming and -performing has always
been part of discussions of the subject—concepts like persona or ethos—what
seems relevant here is the deployment of the “new/improper” name against the
proscriptive contours of an existing subject position. It is the turning against
the pre-existing expectations one arrives in by virtue of being in a given posi-
tion within a formation of discourse. The integrity of a given subject position is
maintained in large part through notions of appropriateness via decorum—the
sense that given one’s position one is entitled to speak in certain ways and
about certain things, but also limited in these regards. Performing within the
bounds of one’s subject position provides for certain levels of social rewards,
at the very least the lack of censure or disciplining, while the violation of the
bounds of decorum which surround one’s position can lead to various forms
of social punishment.5 Perhaps the greatest danger in violating one’s position
is the possibility of exclusion and, therefore, a kind of social death. Our desire
to maintain our position is, therefore, part of our desire for social survival.
Butler describes this desire when noting, “Where social categories guarantee
a recognizable and enduring social existence, the embrace of such categories,
even as they work in the service of subjection, is often preferred to no social
existence at all” (1997, 20).
The multiplicity of subject positions through which we move, however,
also affords a multiplicity of potential social existences and, as such, a multi-
plicity of interests and desires. The memories of these past positions, then, may
create a potential space in which to formulate challenges to one’s present position.
Whatever the underlying motivation, it is clear that within the practices of ev-
 RHETORICAL MANEUVERS 317

eryday life violations of one’s subject position do occur, sometimes accidentally

and sometimes with calculation and, given the preceding theoretical analysis of
subjectivity as position and form, these moments of transgression should prove
potentially productive. The same power relations that dictate the position and
form from which one speaks also, simultaneously, provide a form of agency
that is a potential tool for resistance and reformulation. As Butler notes, “The
power that initiates the subject fails to remain continuous with the power that
is the subject’s agency. A significant and potentially enabling reversal occurs
when power shifts from its status as a condition of agency to the subject’s ‘own’
agency” (12).6 In other words, the same power relations that impose a position
and form on the subject also provide the space from which an altered subject
form can be articulated and, thus, the power relations of subjectivation are, at
least momentarily, reversed. It is to one form of this movement of subjectivity
that I now turn.

The Rhetorical Maneuver

Let’s begin with a fairly mundane example. After class a student ap-
proaches me and states, “I’ve missed some work in the last week and would like
to make it up.” Now, at this point, the regular rules of discourse are in place—I
am in the superordinate position and the student in a subordinate one. We are
both speaking from established positions within a larger formation of discourse
and, up to this point, speaking within the appropriate forms as “student” and
“professor.” However, the student continues, “I think my girlfriend is pregnant
and we’ve both been really upset.” Now, as the professor of the course I am still
within the same regulatory space and, in this case, still fully capable of invoking
my discursive authority and saying “no.” However, the student has made this
“no” more difficult by the story of the possibly pregnant girlfriend.
As noted, this is a mundane and typical example of faculty-student
interaction. Most of us who teach have become almost numb to the numerous
births, deaths, illnesses, and breakdowns that are invoked to excuse late or poor
work. However, its banal nature is instructive to the extent that it suggests how
common the creative shift in subjectivity is. In this very common example, the
student is seeking to disrupt the regular patterns of both his and my subject po-
sitions through the invocation of a different subject form—namely, that of his
impending fatherhood. It is worth noting that the student’s subject position—as
318 KENDALL R. PHILLIPS

a student in a university classroom—has not changed, but the subject form he

invokes is notably not that of a student in a university classroom.
The key to this resistant effort is the movement of subject form within
the prescribed subject position. Arriving in an appropriate subject position—
student—the resistant actor then articulates a, literally, inappropriate subject
form—potential father. In this situation, of course, the notion of impropriety is
defined by the lines of expectation and decorum established within this discur-
sive space. One does not, at least in most cases, expect to discuss a student’s
impending parenthood in a course about, say, rhetorical theory. In spite of the
“inappropriateness” of this move, it is not hard to see how frequent this type of
resistant act is. We have labels for many of these resistant moves based on sub-
jectivity: “coming-out,” “playing the race card,” even “passing.” Each of these
is an example whereby the resistant actor seeks to undermine or outmaneuver
spatial relations of power towards some potential advantage.
As noted earlier, my focus here is not on the interiority of the moving
subject as in Butler’s work, nor on the subject form itself, as with Vivian, but on
the movement of subjectivity as a rhetorical resource through which the agency
provided by a subject position is turned against that position. In attempting a
more praxis-grounded approach to the movement of subjectivity, I will map this
maneuver by following the templates of practice suggested by Michel de Certeau
in The Practice of Everyday Life (1984). I utilize de Certeau as a template for
a number of reasons. First, his work has proved remarkably influential within
American rhetorical studies as a means of attending to the practices of power
and resistance.7 Second, de Certeau’s approach to power and resistance can be
placed in a productive dialogue with the work of other poststructural theorists,
especially Foucault. Indeed, de Certeau characterized much of his work as a
kind of corrective against what he perceived as the more monolithic depictions
of power rendered by Foucault and others and, in this way, de Certeau’s attempt
to map the quotidian spaces of authority and moments of resistance provides a
useful model for conceiving of the individual practices of resistant subjectiv-
ity.8 Finally, a theory of the subject is mysteriously absent in The Practice of
Everyday Life.9 While the book is dedicated to the “common man” who moves
anonymously among fields of power, the notion of a subject and the ways in
which subjectivity is also implicated within practices of power and resistance
is largely ignored.
It seems appropriate here to briefly adumbrate the relevant points of de
Certeau’s theory of practice. In The Practice of Everyday Life, de Certeau bifur-
cates power and resistance along an axis of space and time. Power, according
to de Certeau, is maintained via strategies, which are those relations of power
 RHETORICAL MANEUVERS 319

deployed as a means of maintaining order and control. The crucial aspect of

strategies, in de Certeau’s work, is their reliance on spatial relations:

A distinction between strategies and tactics appears to provide a more adequate

initial schema. I call a strategy the calculation (or manipulation) of power relation-
ships that become possible as soon as a subject with will and power . . . can be
isolated. It postulates a place that can be delimited as its own and serve as the base
from which relations with an exteriority composed of targets or threats . . . can be
managed. (1984, 35–37)

As de Certeau elaborates this notion, strategies function to turn spaces

into proper places, to maintain propriety and order through surveillance and
“panoptic practice[s]”, and to produce knowledge by their “ability to transform
the uncertainties of history into readable spaces” (36).
As suggested in the above quotation, strategies of power are opposed by
the tactics of resistance available to those who are not provided a proper place
of power. While differences in power certainly play a role in distinguishing
strategies and tactics, the key distinction is the opposition of time to space. As
de Certeau elaborates:

Strategies are actions which, thanks to the establishment of a place of power (the
property of a proper), elaborate theoretical places (systems and totalizing discourses)
capable of articulating an ensemble of physical places in which forces are distrib-
uted. . . . They thus privilege spatial relations. . . . Tactics are procedures that gain
validity in relation to the pertinence they lend to time—to the circumstances which
the precise instant of an intervention transforms into a favorable situation, to the
rapidity of the movements that change the organization of a space, to the relations
among successive moments in an action, to the possible intersections of durations
and heterogeneous rhythms, etc. (38)

Thus, for de Certeau, strategies are those relations based on a sense of

place, while tactics are those actions based on a sense of timing. Deprived of
the proper places secured by strategies, tactics are those procedures that utilize
a kind of cunning intelligence to capitalize on a momentary opportunity for
disrupting existing relations of propriety and, thus, the essence of the tactic is
the Greek concept, kairos—the right moment in time.
As de Certeau conceives it, the distinction between strategy and tactic
relies primarily on the opposition of space and time. The graphic in Figure 1
illustrates de Certeau’s notion. Beginning in a position of limited potential force
(I), the tactic relies on the memory (II) of past events to seek the right moment
in which to act quickly (thus, less time needed for preparation) (III) in order to
320 KENDALL R. PHILLIPS

TACTIC

SPACE TIME

I) less II) more

FORCE MEMORY

BEING INVISIBLE

OPERATING VISIBLE

IV) more III) less

EFFECTS TIME

Figure 1. Adapted from graphs in de Certeau (1984, 83, 84, 85).

manifest greater effect (IV). The central components of the tactic—the trans-
formation of memory of past events into rapid action at the right moment - rely
on the Greek notions of mētis (a term elegantly excavated by Marcel Detienne
and Jean-Pierre Vernant [1978, 11], who note that it entails a kind of cunning
intelligence, “an informed prudence,” which utilizes memory to gain a tactical
foresight) and kairos (the right moment in time for maximum effect). It is at this
point, the rapid transformation, where the tactic gains its temporal validity.10
It is also worth observing that de Certeau dissects the movement of
this operation into quadrants. In the first moment—the recognition of “less
Force”—occupies a quadrant of Space/Being, in which the actor recognizes
the limitations on her position within networks of spatial propriety. The second
moment—the use of “more Memory”—occupies the quadrant of Time/Invis-
ible, in which the actor utilizes the cunning intelligence of memory to gain
foresight of possible moments of advantage; a covert attention to the moment.
The third moment—the action that requires “less Time”—is essentially the
exploitation of the right moment in time and occupies the quadrant of Time, be-
 RHETORICAL MANEUVERS 321

ing opportunistic, and the Visible, as the action is now taken. The final moment
of the tactical movement is the achievement of “more Effect,” which occupies
the quadrant of Operating/Space as the action now has its effect on the spatial
procedures of propriety and, if properly executed, achieves maximum effect
because of the exploitation of the moment of opportunity. An example may help
to differentiate the tactic from the maneuver suggested above. In a large lecture
class, students will, at times, begin anonymously but audibly closing book bags
and shuffling paper during the last few minutes of the class. This tactical ruse
is designed to trick the instructor—who has spatial authority—into believing
the class period has come to an end and, therefore, dismiss the students. This is
tactical because it relies on timing; the ruse, for instance, would hardly have a
chance of working if performed during the first ten minutes or even during the
middle of the class period.
Returning to the question of subjectivity as a resource for resistance, it
should be clear that the kinds of social rewards and threats of exclusion that
encourage a subject to willingly subject themselves to the dictates of a given
position and its appropriate form are, essentially, spatial strategies of power.
The capacity to be recognized within a space of discourse and the threat of be-
ing erased from this space, or at least censured within it, are clearly the kinds
of relations that are involved in the maintenance of “proper spaces.” While
tactics provide one means for resisting the propriety of proper space—through
the exploitation of that moment when the strategic eye of power is turned else-
where or the stable rhythms of a readable space are momentarily disrupted—the
tactic does not adequately explain the resources for resistance provided by the
multiplicity of subjectivity.
Thus, I will suggest as a friendly amendment the addition of the rhetori-
cal maneuver to de Certeau’s conception of strategies and tactics. Paralleling
de Certeau, the rhetorical maneuver is a calculated action determined by the
multiplicity of possible subjectivities,11 and can be defined as: the articulation
of an inappropriate alternate form of subjectivity within an already defined
subject position. Unlike tactics, which gain validity through time, or strategies,
which gain validity through space, the rhetorical maneuver gains its validity
from the multiplicity of subject forms and the disruptive potential inherent in
articulating an inappropriate subjectivity. I chose maneuver in order to parallel
de Certeau’s terms and to capture the “movement or procedure intended as a
skillful or shrewd step toward some objective”12 and add the term “rhetorical”
because the inappropriate subjectivity must be articulated.
This notion of “articulation” is borrowed from Laclau and Mouffe, who
define it as practices that establish “relations among elements such that their
322 KENDALL R. PHILLIPS

identity is modified as a result of the articulatory practice” (1985, 105). Here

the elements being modified begin with the types of discourse appropriate to a
subject position—as defined by strategic, spatial relations—with the potential
to further modify the constraining spatial relations of the discourse formations
themselves. Thus, the rhetorical maneuver involves the articulation of a subject
form that is inappropriate. It is worth stressing here that, in this context, the
notion of “appropriate” or “inappropriate” is defined by the spatial strategies
of a given discourse formation and it is important to recognize that propriety
is another point of identification through which subject form is tied to subject
position. There may be, however, instances in which these limits of positional
propriety run counter to the interests of the person occupying that position.
Hence, from a resistant standpoint, “inappropriate” discourses will, likely, be
the most useful and effective type of discourse.
Analytically, this sense of the “inappropriateness” of a given subject form
may not be as immediately identifiable. As I’ll discuss in more detail later, some
discourse formations may provide a considerable amount of latitude concerning
one’s subject form, while others may provide a fairly circumscribed set of pos-
sibilities. For critics seeking to examine an instance of a rhetorical maneuver,
the question of the propriety of a given subject form can only be determined by
examining the history of that given subject position—in terms of the rewards
and punishments afforded to previous utterances—and by attending to the kinds
of reactions a given maneuver provokes.
In Figure 2, I suggest the ways that the rhetorical maneuver parallels the
tactic while remaining a distinct action. Beginning in a position in which the
desires of the actor are constrained by their subject position (hence a poor fit)
(I), the actor again utilizes memory (II), but here it is not a recollection towards
opportunistic foresight but of past/alternate subject forms embodied in previ-
ous subject positions. This alternate subject form is then articulated, which
creates a point of disunity within the subject speaking position (III), resulting
in the displacement of the speaking subject (IV) and—potentially—the regula-
tory spatial relations that constrain that subject position. Or, to return to my
mundane example, the student-as-student is in a weak position to achieve his
desired results (I: less fit), and re-calls the alternate subject form of impending
fatherhood (II: more memory). Upon articulating the discourse of this alternative
subject form, his position of “student-as-student” becomes less unified through
the introduction of “student-as-father” (III), resulting in a displacement of his
regular subject position and—at least momentarily—the strategic discourse
regularly directed at him (IV).
 RHETORICAL MANEUVERS 323

MANEUVER
SPACE – SUBJECTIVITY –
Subject Position Subject Form

I) less II) more

FIT MEMORY

BEING INVISIBLE

OPERATING VISIBLE

IV) more III) less

DISPLACEMENT UNITY

Figure 2. The rhetorical maneuver.

In seeking to conceptualize the maneuver in ways parallel to de Certeau’s

notion of tactic, I have utilized the same quadrant configuration, with one notable
change. Where de Certeau divided Space and Time along the vertical axis, I have
divided Space–Subject Position and Subjectivity–Subject Form. Thus, strategic
spatial relations provide a subject position and an “appropriate” subject form,
but at the moment of articulation, the subject may choose an alternative form,
one that is inappropriate and, therefore, disruptive.
As with the tactic, the rhetorical maneuver can be thought of as mov-
ing through four quadrants. The first movement—the recognition of a poor fit
between desire and the constraints of the proper subject position—occupies the
quadrant of Space/Being. Interestingly, this is the same quadrant from which
the tactic originates and, thus, suggests that tactics and maneuvers bear a close
relationship in the sense that one’s subject position is in some way inadequate
to one’s purposes. The second movement—the utilization of memory to recall
alternate forms of subjectivity—occupies the quadrant of Subject/Invisible
324 KENDALL R. PHILLIPS

because it is the surreptitious re/collection of inappropriate, alternate subject

forms. The third movement—the articulation of the discourse of the inappropri-
ate subject form—provides a spectacular dissolution of the apparent unity of a
subject position and, thus, occupies the quadrant of Subject/Visible. The final
movement—the effect of the dis-unifying, inappropriate subject form upon
the “place” of the subject position within the broader formation of spatial rela-
tions—occupies the quadrant of Space/Operating as it is here that the modifica-
tion of the strategically positioned subject may occur.
While good timing may increase the effect of displacement, the key to
the rhetorical maneuver’s validity is its deployment of discourse from an alter-
native, and thus inappropriate, subject form. There is no reason to believe that
the introduction of inappropriate subject-discourse is necessarily dependent on
a particular moment. Indeed, to the contrary, where de Certeau makes the point
that a tactic is dependent on an occasion—“the occasion is taken advantage of,
not created” (1984, 86)—the maneuver has the potential to create an occasion
through the displacement of strategic relations of subject positions. The articu-
lation of an inappropriate subject form challenges those points of identification
through which a subject is rendered intelligible and identifiable—a moment of
dis-identification in Butler’s term—and, as such, threatens to displace those
strategic relations deployed to maintain intelligibility and order. It is not difficult
to recognize both the commonness of such a maneuver and its potential benefits
for those seeking to redefine their place in a broader formation of discourse.
“Coming out” as gay or lesbian, while undoubtedly fraught with difficulties,
may, potentially, create an occasion in which relationships (familial, profes-
sional, social) can be redefined in a way perceived as beneficial to the person
making the maneuver. While timing may be a factor, the rhetorical maneuver
itself is in no way dependent on a prior occasion and, thus, is distinct from de
Certeau’s notion of a tactic.
Beyond being theoretically distinct from the tactic and the strategy, the
rhetorical maneuver provides a means for conceptualizing the ways that the
processes of subjection—the strategic ways in which we are interpellated into
a subject position and the means by which we are disciplined into being within
that position via a particular subject form—also provide resources for disrupt-
ing these processes. Subject positions, thus, must be thought of as ambivalent,
as providing a limiting form of agency but an agency that can be used against
the very strategic relations of power that authorize it. As Butler conceives this,
“Power acts on the subject in at least two ways: first, as what makes the subject
possible, the condition of its possibility and its formative occasion, and second,
as what is taken up and reiterated in the subject’s ‘own’ acting” (1997, 14). Each
 RHETORICAL MANEUVERS 325

reiteration of the subject, however, is not identical to its predecessors and these
shifting iterations of the subject’s form provide the means by which the relations
of subjectivation can be resisted, reversed, and transformed.

Implications

By introducing the notion of a “rhetorical maneuver” into the theoretical

and critical language related to subjectivity, of course, I hope to do more than
merely amend the works of Michel de Certeau. If the concept has any purchase,
then it should provide some new avenues towards thinking about those points
of slippage between the positioning of the subject and the discursive forms
through which the subject acts within those positions. In the final section of
this essay, I sketch out at least three of these potential avenues: agency, artistry,
and memory.
One of the most vexing problems raised by poststructural theories of the
subject has been the question of agency, a question that has received consider-
able recent attention within American rhetorical studies.13 At the heart of this
problem is the question of how a subject who is both positioned and formed by
relations of power can acquire an agency that can be turned against this power.
The movement of a rhetorical maneuver suggests this potential agency is located
in the space in between the subject position and the subject form. The subject
may be positioned by relations of power, but once so positioned they may choose
to risk performing an alternative and inappropriate form of subjectivity. By
choosing to speak differently than the form prescribed by a subject position, the
subject invokes the agency provided by a position but invokes it as a reaction
against the contours of that position. Butler approaches the same problem when
contending, “Agency exceeds the power by which it is enabled. One might say
that the purposes of power are not always the purposes of agency” (1997, 15).
The rhetorical maneuver is one mechanism through which the “purposes of
agency” are able to escape the “purposes of power.” A conception of the rhe-
torical maneuver may provide a critical lens through which this play of agency
against power might be more clearly understood.
The agency acquired in the rhetorical maneuver, of course, also entails
a degree of risk. Some maneuvers, perhaps like that of my nervous student,
hold little potential risk while others, perhaps coming out as gay or lesbian,
may hold considerably greater dangers. In part, the degree of risk seems tied
to the apparent permanence of the power relations which serve to position a
326 KENDALL R. PHILLIPS

subject. Coming out among a group of close and liberal-minded friends might
hold comparatively little risk, where coming out to fundamentalist relatives
may hold considerably greater risk. In both instances, a rhetorical maneuver
is being performed—an articulation of an alternative subject form within an
established subject position—however, the distinction is of the rigidity with
which the subject form is perceived as inextricably tied to the subject position.
It might also be worth thinking of subject positions as being either “tighter”
or “looser” depending on the acceptable variance in subject forms allowed.
Certainly there are some positions that we occupy that afford us a great deal
of latitude, or looseness, in the ways we perform in that position, while others
do not. In turn, it seems likely that the degree to which the agency achieved by
a rhetorical maneuver is able to affect the relations of power is also correlated
to this sense of rigidity—or tightness—and risk: the more rigid the positioning
relations of power are then both the more risk entailed and the more potential
agency for displacing those relations. Agency, therefore, must be conceived
not only in terms of power and the resistance to power, but also in terms of the
risks entailed by invoking it.14
The performance of this reconfiguring entails a kind of turning or twist-
ing of one’s self against the defined contours of one’s position and this kind of
turning seems to be the essential character of a rhetorical maneuver. The ap-
propriately positioned subject embodies one particular—and sanctioned—form,
but in the “invisible” realm of the subject’s being, she also contains the memory
of alternative forms of being, which can be thought of as hidden facets of the
self. The rhetorical maneuver, thus, is a kind of turning of the subject in which
the turn reveals one of these unexpected alternative forms. This turn, in turn,
can be thought of as twisting the strategic relations of power that positioned the
subject in the first place and, in that subsequent twisting, creating the potential
for a transformation or reversal of those power relations.15
This notion of the turn, or trope, suggests some of the important rhetorical
dimensions of this movement. At one level, returning to the previous discus-
sion of risk and agency, Hayden White points out that the trope is in essence
a deviation from customary language and this deviance is a crucial element in
the workings of a trope. As Nietzsche explores in his “On Truth and Lies in a
Non-Moral Sense,” once the deviance of a trope has been lost, its potential for
inventiveness has also been lost. Humans are able to live in a secure world of
stability only by allowing ourselves to forget the deviance of our metaphors and
“by forgetting that he himself is an artistically creating subject” (2001, 1176).
Rhetorical maneuvers, as a kind of trope, then will also become com-
monplace as the successful maneuver transforms the nature of the subject posi-
tion against and within which it was employed. The transformative potential of
 RHETORICAL MANEUVERS 327

such a maneuver is related, at least in part, to the amount of deviation from the
prescribed form of that position. And, in turn, its success is measured by the
eventual acceptance of the new subject form as acceptable, even typical.
Conceiving of the rhetorical maneuver as a kind of trope also, of course,
suggests that it be understood in terms of a kind of rhetorical artistry. All turns
are not equal and one of the ways they can be distinguished is in terms of a
kind of aesthetic dimension recognized as a kind of rhetorical artistry. Guattari’s
palette, one might say, still relies on the artistic ability of the subject wielding
the brush. In this regard, Biesecker’s urging that rhetorical scholars recognize
the canon of style as crucially related to the interplay of subjectivity, power
and knowledge is echoed here. The rhetorical maneuver involves not simply
a turn, but a turn in the form of being, which Foucault thought of as a kind of
aesthetics of existence; a continual re-crafting of the self. In this regard, style
can be seen as embedded in the classical concern for ethos—the presentation
of self to others.16 Seen in this way, the rhetorical maneuver involves trading
in one’s established—or positioned—ethos for one that is not already accepted
within a particular space. The introduction of this new subject form involves
a deeply artistic ethos, to use Aristotle’s term, in that the introduced, inappro-
priate subject form relies purely on its artistic rendering and not on any prior
expectations or assumptions.
There are numerous examples of this kind of artistic movement of one’s
ethos within the realm of public address. Richard Nixon effected this kind of
move during the “Checker’s Speech” in which his position as political-figure
was rearticulated through his invocation of the subject form of humble family
man and protective father who had no intention of returning his children’s cocker
spaniel. A similar, albeit somewhat less effective, maneuver was attempted by
Bill Clinton during his initial response to the Lewinsky hearings. In attempt-
ing to reposition himself as a wounded private man the president declared,
“Now this matter is between me, the two people I love most—my wife and our
daughter—and our God. I must put it right and I am prepared to do whatever
it takes to do so. Nothing is more important to me personally. But it is private
and I intend to reclaim my family life for my family. It’s nobody’s business but
ours. Even presidents have private lives” (1998). In both instances, political
figures maneuvered their subjectivity and sought to utilize their “private/famil-
ial” subject forms as a means of gaining political advantage. In Nixon’s case,
the maneuver was markedly successful; his detailed description of his humble
background and loving family saved him the vice presidency and salvaged his
political career. In Clinton’s case, his brief, terse remarks to the nation did little
to spare him the ramifications of the Lewinsky scandal or the impeachment that
would come only a few months later. While there are, undoubtedly, numerous
328 KENDALL R. PHILLIPS

factors related to the success and failure of these two addresses, it seems likely
that the rhetorical artistry with which each sought to reconfigure their public
ethos is one.
Finally, in addition to the rhetorical maneuver’s political and critical
implications there is at least one potentially interesting avenue for theoretical
exploration: the relationship between memory and resistance. Memory occu-
pies the crucial second step of the rhetorical maneuver and it is this sense of
memory that deserves additional attention. As an initial step in conceiving of
this resistant memory it is worth recalling Foucault’s notion of counter-memory.
For Foucault, counter-memory is an utterly different type of historical gesture,
one that separates occurrences from the assumed metaphysical underpinnings
of meaning, identity, and telos. One of Foucault’s senses of counter-memory is
worth quoting at length here, where he notes the way history is used in:

the systematic dissociation of identity. This is necessary because this rather weak
identity, which we attempt to support and to unify under a mask, is in itself only
a parody: it is plural; countless spirits dispute its possession; numerous systems
intersect and compete. The study of history makes one “happy, unlike the metaphy-
sicians, to posses in oneself not an immortal soul but many mortal ones.” (1977,
quoting Nietzsche, “The Wanderer and His Shadow, 1880, 17).

The memory involved in the rhetorical maneuver resembles Foucault’s

sense of this genealogical counter-memory in that it relies on the recollection of
the multiple subject forms derived from the multiple subject positions a person
has occupied and that this recollection functions to dissipate the illusion of a
unified subjectivity (or, in Nietzsche’s sense, the singular “immortal soul.”)
Foucault’s discussion of genealogical counter-memory, of course, is in
terms of a broader mode of social critique. There is, however, a related concept
from Foucault’s later work that is more focused on the notion of individual
subjectivity. The notion is “thought,” of which he explains: “Thought is free-
dom in relation to what one does, the motion by which one detaches oneself
from it, establishes it as an object, and reflects on it as a problem” (1997, 117).
As I’ve discussed more fully elsewhere (2002), thought occurs at those points
of contradiction between overlapping senses of identity and is crucial in the
process of inventing new discourses. As with the genealogical counter-memory,
thought disrupts existing notions of identity, but, in addition, thought entails
the possibility of constructing new forms of subjectivity and, in so doing, new
contours in a subject position.
The notion of a rhetorical maneuver provides a way of conceiving the
relationship between counter-memory—the disruptive process of recollecting
 RHETORICAL MANEUVERS 329

alternative subject positions and discourses—and thought—the process of prob-

lematizing one’s subject position and inventing new subject forms. By conceiving
the movement between the (counter)memory of alternative subject forms and the
disruptive articulation of these forms, the rhetorical maneuver suggests the way
counter-memories can be transformed into an inventional moment from which
disruptive discourses might emanate.17 Additionally, the rhetorical maneuver
adds to Foucault’s two concepts the vital element of a performative articulation
and the potential for rhetorical intervention and invention.

Conclusion

The tension between the fluidity of the human subject and the constraining
nature of the subject position has important implications for our understanding
of the nature of subjectivity and its processes of becoming in the world. This
tension is not solely a matter of the theoretical nature of the subject but also
bears importantly on the practices of the subject as it seeks to negotiate the
space in between its multiplicity and its position within discourses that seek to
fix it. I have introduced the notion of a rhetorical maneuver in order to elaborate
upon one particular procedure through which this tension becomes a resource
by which the subject may redirect the agency of its position against the very
relations of power/knowledge that seek to position it.
Rhetorical maneuvers, as conceived, seem to be remarkably pervasive
actions: when a person asks to leave work early to pick up a sick child or in-
vokes their professional expertise in a family gathering or articulates their ethnic
heritage in a political debate. Each of these instances involves the invocation
of some alternate subject form within a formation of discourse that positions
one differently (i.e., as worker, or son, or citizen). Sometimes these maneuvers
become so commonplace that they become part of the expected form itself—for
instance, the Family and Medical Leave Act has institutionalized the familial
responsibilities of the worker. At other times, however, the rhetorical maneuver
may more dramatically deviate from the prescribed form and, in so doing, afford
both more risk and more potential for disruption and change.
As a critical concept, the notion of a rhetorical maneuver suggests ex-
amination of precisely those moments when the individual subject invokes
some alternate subject form and in violating the limits of their prescribed
position seeks to perform differently. The seemingly ceaseless turning of the
human subject within and against the contours of its various positions speaks,
330 KENDALL R. PHILLIPS

ultimately, not only to the nature of the subject but also to its seemingly end-
less potential for drawing upon the resources of memory, agency, artistry and
rhetorical invention.18
Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies
Syracuse University

Notes
1. Foucault conceptualized his later work as attending to “the arts of existence,” which he un-
derstood as “those intentional and voluntary action by which men not only set themselves rules of
conduct, but also seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in their singular being, and
to make their life into an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values and meets stylistic criteria”
(1985, 10–11).
2. The debates over recognition as a political strategy have been driven largely by the relationship
between political recognition and pursuits of resource redistribution. This question has been most
directly pressed in on-going debates between Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth (see Fraser [1996],
and Fraser and Honneth [2003]) as well as Fraser and Judith Butler (see Butler [1998] and Fraser
[1998]). The present essay’s introduction of the rhetorical maneuver seems to have implications
for the issue of recognition and mis-recognition but the depth and complexity of these debates
necessitates that these implications be more fully explored in some subsequent discussion.
3. Burke’s notion of conventional form seems most applicable here. On this form he notes,
“We might note, in conventional form, the element of ‘categorical expectancy.’ That is, whereas
the anticipations and gratification of progressive and repetitive form arise during the process of
reading, the expectations of conventional form may be anterior to the reading” (1953, 127–28).
4. See Spivak (1993) and Butler (1993, 37).
5. On this point, conversation analysts have produced interesting and provocative work on
the on-going process of positioning within conversation and further suggested the importance of
propriety within these positions. On this point see Davies and Harré (1999).
6. It is also worth noting here that for the purpose of the present essay I am bracketing Butler’s
larger project of interrogating the space in between Freud and Foucault. Butler’s work in The Psychic
Life of Power is focused on the interior nature of the subject’s desire of subjection. My purpose here
is the ways that subjection is reconfigured rhetorically. While there is clearly an important point
of connection between this reconfiguring and the desire for change, in the present essay I can only
gesture towards this connection.
7. De Certeau’s work features in a number of recent rhetorical studies essays, such as Bates
(2003), Bergman (2003), Erickson (1998), Hartnett, (1998), Nakayama and Krizek (1995), and
Stormer (2002).
8. De Certeau seems to have conceived at least some of his work in opposition to Foucault; see
de Certeau (1984, esp. chap. 4; 1998, esp. sec. 4).
9. Indeed, the beginnings of the present essay arose from the ways that Thomas Nakayama
and Robert Krizek utilized de Certeau in their essay on whiteness. The pervasive and anonymous
authority of whiteness was conceived in terms of de Certeau’s notion of spatial strategy, a move
that seemed sensible. But, the resistant discourses of non-whites were conceived as tactics. Given
the reliance of tactics on a notion of timing, this equation of racial discourses with tactics pointed,
at least to me, to a theoretical failing in de Certeau’s bifurcation of power and resistance based on
space and time.
10. It is worth noting here that the notion of a rhetorical maneuver also seems to rely heavily
on the broad kind of cunning intelligence embodied in mētis. Elsewhere in their discussion of this
Greek concept, Detienne and Vernant observe that, “The many-coloured and shimmering nature
of mētis is a mark of its kinship with the divided, shifting world of multiplicity in the midst of
which it operates” and a bit later, “Mētis is itself a power of cunning and deceit. It operates through
 RHETORICAL MANEUVERS 331

disguise. In order to dupe its victims it assumes a form which masks, instead of revealing, its true
being” (1978, 21).
11. A close parallel to de Certeau’s phrase (1984, 37).
12. See Webster’s New World Dictionary (1988, 821).
13. The question of agency was one major component of the 2003 Alliance of Rhetoric Societies
meeting in Chicago. The wrangling over the relationship between agent, agency and subjectivity
has continued in productive and contentious ways. See Geisler (2004; 2005) and Lundberg and
Gunn (2005).
14. Butler puts the point eloquently: “The subject is compelled to repeat the norms by which it
is produced, but that repetition establishes a domain of risk, for if one fails to reinstate the norm
“in the right way,” one becomes subject to further sanction, one feels the prevailing conditions of
existence threatened. And yet, without a repetition that risks life—in its current organization—how
might we begin to imagine the contingency of that organization, and performatively reconfigure the
contours of the conditions of life?” (1997, 29).
15. In her work, Butler also attends to the tropological nature of the subject but, as noted earlier,
her attention is on the formation of the subject where my attention here is on the rhetorical perfor-
mance of that turn. Butler emphasizes the turning inward or back upon one’s self; my focus is on
the turning outwards of one of one’s selves.
16. In regards to ethos, consider the ways that Foucault conceived of it as the practice of self on
self (1994, 6).
17. It is worth noting here that this counter-memory need not be conceived as only that of an
individual but may also entail broader “public countermemories” by which a larger community
of individuals might draw upon their collective recollection of an alternate subject form. The link
between the rhetorical maneuver and the larger contours of public memory seems suggestive.
18. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2004 Rhetoric Society of America con-
ference in Austin, Texas. The author would like to acknowledge the helpful suggestions of Stephen
Browne, Bernadette Calafell, David DePew, Diane Grimes, Catherine Thomas, and Bradford Vivian,
as well as the two anonymous reviewers.

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