Maurice Charland - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Maurice Charland
The liberals may well be godless, but they are not very bothered by justice. The left, on the oth... more The liberals may well be godless, but they are not very bothered by justice. The left, on the other hand, does want justice, but is still extremely pious (Jean-Francois Lyotard 1989, 123). The comic frame will appear the most serviceable for the handling of human relationships" (Burke 1984, 106). The Place Of Impiety In Civic Argument 2 the laughter that can stand as proof of his claim. Furthermore, such laughter requires a prior moment of judgment, a recognition of the justness of the act. Not all pieing is deserved. Pieing thus has a democratic flavour, not because it is oppositional, but because it invites a critical popular regard toward authority. Pieing offers a rhetoric of comedy that, through impiety, enables judgment based in critical distance, and works to undermine the network of identifications that organize piety's eros. While impiety is a recurring rhetorical figure in our actually existing democracies, it has received only limited attention among theorists of communicative democracy. This is hardly surprising, since theories of communicative democracy usually champion pragmatic norms derived from idealized models of conversation. Such models would consider impious rhetoric to serve only partiality and negative critique. Impiety, read as incivility, would be destructive of community. In what follows, I will offer an alternative view. Inspired both by Kenneth Burke and Jean-François Lyotard, I argue not only for an impious spirit, but I also seek to distinguish between different sense of impiety, and argue for what I term prudent impiety, which is to say an impiety that is not simply destructive, but enabling. Why Impiety? Piety is usually considered an ethical virtue, consisting of dutifulness to one's parents, superiors, or gods. The pious soul has internalized obligation. In answering the call, one is true to oneself. As Burke tells us citing Santayana, piety consists in "loyalty to the sources of our being" (Burke 1965, 71). Since these sources are at least in part external to the self, even while formative it, piety proceeds through identification. Piety places difference under erasure. Piety is the virtue of harmonious subjects. Impiety, on the other hand, is piety's active negation, and consists of "ungodliness, unrighteousness, wickedness." Impiety, in its usual usage, is a sin: a refusal not only of duty, but also of God. Piety and impiety are not for as much simple antonyms, but set in play different ontologies. Piety moves toward unity: It seeks wholeness through the denial of difference. The pious soul, filled with grace, is constituted in harmony with itself and with its sources. Impiety begins, on the other hand, with a break, a refusal, a sin, and as such an affirmation of will. Impiety is inaugurated in difference. While piety is fundamentally based in a denial of self through transcendence, impiety begins with an other, or otherness within the self.
Communication, 1987
Esta reflexion concierne a la informatica como nueva manifestacion de la cultura reificationnelle... more Esta reflexion concierne a la informatica como nueva manifestacion de la cultura reificationnelle y dominadora de la razon. El analisis del discurso publicitario en micro-informatica muestra las contradicciones y las implicaciones peligrosas que esta tecnologia produce de una manera inmediata.
Canadian Journal of Communication, 1992
Montreal’s recent controversy over water fluoridation illustrates the challenge to deliberative r... more Montreal’s recent controversy over water fluoridation illustrates the challenge to deliberative rhetoric within postmodernity. The dispute ultimately turns on the claim to knowledge of public health officials. No non-controversial meta-narrative stands to legitimate their character and claims. Rhetorical discourse performs the impossible task of rendering the incommensurable to the court of judgment.
Philosophy and Rhetoric, 2003
... [Access article in PDF] The Constitution of Rhetoric's Tradition. Maurice Charland. Rhet... more ... [Access article in PDF] The Constitution of Rhetoric's Tradition. Maurice Charland. Rhetoric is not a discipline. That is to say, as a domain of theoretical and practical knowledge, rhetoric is weakly institutionalized, lacking a centralized ...
Philosophy and Rhetoric, 2008
It is difficult to write of the dead and their work, especially when one counts them as friends b... more It is difficult to write of the dead and their work, especially when one counts them as friends but does not wish to engage in simple epideictic. Scholarship might well be an unending conversation, but death limits speaking privileges. This undermines the conversational ...
La communication politique
Javnost - The Public, 2001
The liberals may well be godless, but they are not very bothered by justice. The left, on the oth... more The liberals may well be godless, but they are not very bothered by justice. The left, on the other hand, does want justice, but is still extremely pious (Jean-Francois Lyotard 1989, 123). The comic frame will appear the most serviceable for the handling of human relationships" (Burke 1984, 106). The Place Of Impiety In Civic Argument 2 the laughter that can stand as proof of his claim. Furthermore, such laughter requires a prior moment of judgment, a recognition of the justness of the act. Not all pieing is deserved. Pieing thus has a democratic flavour, not because it is oppositional, but because it invites a critical popular regard toward authority. Pieing offers a rhetoric of comedy that, through impiety, enables judgment based in critical distance, and works to undermine the network of identifications that organize piety's eros. While impiety is a recurring rhetorical figure in our actually existing democracies, it has received only limited attention among theorists of communicative democracy. This is hardly surprising, since theories of communicative democracy usually champion pragmatic norms derived from idealized models of conversation. Such models would consider impious rhetoric to serve only partiality and negative critique. Impiety, read as incivility, would be destructive of community. In what follows, I will offer an alternative view. Inspired both by Kenneth Burke and Jean-François Lyotard, I argue not only for an impious spirit, but I also seek to distinguish between different sense of impiety, and argue for what I term prudent impiety, which is to say an impiety that is not simply destructive, but enabling. Why Impiety? Piety is usually considered an ethical virtue, consisting of dutifulness to one's parents, superiors, or gods. The pious soul has internalized obligation. In answering the call, one is true to oneself. As Burke tells us citing Santayana, piety consists in "loyalty to the sources of our being" (Burke 1965, 71). Since these sources are at least in part external to the self, even while formative it, piety proceeds through identification. Piety places difference under erasure. Piety is the virtue of harmonious subjects. Impiety, on the other hand, is piety's active negation, and consists of "ungodliness, unrighteousness, wickedness." Impiety, in its usual usage, is a sin: a refusal not only of duty, but also of God. Piety and impiety are not for as much simple antonyms, but set in play different ontologies. Piety moves toward unity: It seeks wholeness through the denial of difference. The pious soul, filled with grace, is constituted in harmony with itself and with its sources. Impiety begins, on the other hand, with a break, a refusal, a sin, and as such an affirmation of will. Impiety is inaugurated in difference. While piety is fundamentally based in a denial of self through transcendence, impiety begins with an other, or otherness within the self.
There is value in beginning with a thin conception of reconciliation. Otherwise our understanding... more There is value in beginning with a thin conception of reconciliation. Otherwise our understanding of it in political terms is clouded because we will be prone to quickly literalize a metaphor. Our usual context for understanding reconciliation is interpersonal. We imagine a moment of harmony between friends, family members, or co-workers that is disrupted by some injury or misunderstanding that wounds. Reconciliation is then both a process and an outcome where that disruption is overcome, where the wound is acknowledged, and harmony, while not as innocent as before, is restored. That understanding, in a process Kenneth Burke described in the Rhetoric of Religion, is carried into other realms: into the realm of political and social institutions, but also and more fundamentally into the immaterial realm of the theological. Reconciliation is understood as not only between humans, but between body and soul, or between men and women and their god. From there, the meaning of reconciliatio...
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 1991
... Foucault, concerned with accounting for the production of statements and for the character of... more ... Foucault, concerned with accounting for the production of statements and for the character of formations of power, does not seek to judge discourse. ... Foucault's conceptual apparatus offers no horizon against which the power/knowledge dynamic could be considered. ...
Page 1. fm i/ K RHETORIC IN THE FORMATION OF CANADIAN CIVIL CULTURE AND Michael Borland and Mauri... more Page 1. fm i/ K RHETORIC IN THE FORMATION OF CANADIAN CIVIL CULTURE AND Michael Borland and Maurice Charland Page 2. Page 3. LAW, RHETORIC, AND IRONY IN THE FORMATION OF CANADIAN CIVIL CULTURE ...
The liberals may well be godless, but they are not very bothered by justice. The left, on the oth... more The liberals may well be godless, but they are not very bothered by justice. The left, on the other hand, does want justice, but is still extremely pious (Jean-Francois Lyotard
Philosophy & Rhetoric, 2017
Canadian Journal of Communication, 2016
Jazz rhetoric can mean two things. The first is the discourse about jazz, its significance and it... more Jazz rhetoric can mean two things. The first is the discourse about jazz, its significance and its meaning. The second is the music itself as an unfolding form performed to an audience. Both have constitutive political effects that function through pathos prior to a distinction between subject and object. This pathos arises through in-betweenness or interality, and can be described in terms of the middle voice, Dasein, and aesthetic experience. This article develops these concepts through a discussion of the jazz rhetorics of Wynton Marsalis and Amiri Baraka.La rhétorique du jazz englobe deux phénomènes : Les discours sur le jazz, le décrivant, le donnant sens et signification et la musique jazz en tant que telle, qui apparait et se donne forme lors de sa mise en scène devant un auditoire. Ces deux ont des effets constitutifs d’ordre politique à travers un pathos qui précède toute distinction entre objet et sujet. Ce pathos émerge de l’intéral, d’une lacune relationnelle à laquelle ...
The liberals may well be godless, but they are not very bothered by justice. The left, on the oth... more The liberals may well be godless, but they are not very bothered by justice. The left, on the other hand, does want justice, but is still extremely pious (Jean-Francois Lyotard 1989, 123). The comic frame will appear the most serviceable for the handling of human relationships" (Burke 1984, 106). The Place Of Impiety In Civic Argument 2 the laughter that can stand as proof of his claim. Furthermore, such laughter requires a prior moment of judgment, a recognition of the justness of the act. Not all pieing is deserved. Pieing thus has a democratic flavour, not because it is oppositional, but because it invites a critical popular regard toward authority. Pieing offers a rhetoric of comedy that, through impiety, enables judgment based in critical distance, and works to undermine the network of identifications that organize piety's eros. While impiety is a recurring rhetorical figure in our actually existing democracies, it has received only limited attention among theorists of communicative democracy. This is hardly surprising, since theories of communicative democracy usually champion pragmatic norms derived from idealized models of conversation. Such models would consider impious rhetoric to serve only partiality and negative critique. Impiety, read as incivility, would be destructive of community. In what follows, I will offer an alternative view. Inspired both by Kenneth Burke and Jean-François Lyotard, I argue not only for an impious spirit, but I also seek to distinguish between different sense of impiety, and argue for what I term prudent impiety, which is to say an impiety that is not simply destructive, but enabling. Why Impiety? Piety is usually considered an ethical virtue, consisting of dutifulness to one's parents, superiors, or gods. The pious soul has internalized obligation. In answering the call, one is true to oneself. As Burke tells us citing Santayana, piety consists in "loyalty to the sources of our being" (Burke 1965, 71). Since these sources are at least in part external to the self, even while formative it, piety proceeds through identification. Piety places difference under erasure. Piety is the virtue of harmonious subjects. Impiety, on the other hand, is piety's active negation, and consists of "ungodliness, unrighteousness, wickedness." Impiety, in its usual usage, is a sin: a refusal not only of duty, but also of God. Piety and impiety are not for as much simple antonyms, but set in play different ontologies. Piety moves toward unity: It seeks wholeness through the denial of difference. The pious soul, filled with grace, is constituted in harmony with itself and with its sources. Impiety begins, on the other hand, with a break, a refusal, a sin, and as such an affirmation of will. Impiety is inaugurated in difference. While piety is fundamentally based in a denial of self through transcendence, impiety begins with an other, or otherness within the self.
Communication, 1987
Esta reflexion concierne a la informatica como nueva manifestacion de la cultura reificationnelle... more Esta reflexion concierne a la informatica como nueva manifestacion de la cultura reificationnelle y dominadora de la razon. El analisis del discurso publicitario en micro-informatica muestra las contradicciones y las implicaciones peligrosas que esta tecnologia produce de una manera inmediata.
Canadian Journal of Communication, 1992
Montreal’s recent controversy over water fluoridation illustrates the challenge to deliberative r... more Montreal’s recent controversy over water fluoridation illustrates the challenge to deliberative rhetoric within postmodernity. The dispute ultimately turns on the claim to knowledge of public health officials. No non-controversial meta-narrative stands to legitimate their character and claims. Rhetorical discourse performs the impossible task of rendering the incommensurable to the court of judgment.
Philosophy and Rhetoric, 2003
... [Access article in PDF] The Constitution of Rhetoric's Tradition. Maurice Charland. Rhet... more ... [Access article in PDF] The Constitution of Rhetoric's Tradition. Maurice Charland. Rhetoric is not a discipline. That is to say, as a domain of theoretical and practical knowledge, rhetoric is weakly institutionalized, lacking a centralized ...
Philosophy and Rhetoric, 2008
It is difficult to write of the dead and their work, especially when one counts them as friends b... more It is difficult to write of the dead and their work, especially when one counts them as friends but does not wish to engage in simple epideictic. Scholarship might well be an unending conversation, but death limits speaking privileges. This undermines the conversational ...
La communication politique
Javnost - The Public, 2001
The liberals may well be godless, but they are not very bothered by justice. The left, on the oth... more The liberals may well be godless, but they are not very bothered by justice. The left, on the other hand, does want justice, but is still extremely pious (Jean-Francois Lyotard 1989, 123). The comic frame will appear the most serviceable for the handling of human relationships" (Burke 1984, 106). The Place Of Impiety In Civic Argument 2 the laughter that can stand as proof of his claim. Furthermore, such laughter requires a prior moment of judgment, a recognition of the justness of the act. Not all pieing is deserved. Pieing thus has a democratic flavour, not because it is oppositional, but because it invites a critical popular regard toward authority. Pieing offers a rhetoric of comedy that, through impiety, enables judgment based in critical distance, and works to undermine the network of identifications that organize piety's eros. While impiety is a recurring rhetorical figure in our actually existing democracies, it has received only limited attention among theorists of communicative democracy. This is hardly surprising, since theories of communicative democracy usually champion pragmatic norms derived from idealized models of conversation. Such models would consider impious rhetoric to serve only partiality and negative critique. Impiety, read as incivility, would be destructive of community. In what follows, I will offer an alternative view. Inspired both by Kenneth Burke and Jean-François Lyotard, I argue not only for an impious spirit, but I also seek to distinguish between different sense of impiety, and argue for what I term prudent impiety, which is to say an impiety that is not simply destructive, but enabling. Why Impiety? Piety is usually considered an ethical virtue, consisting of dutifulness to one's parents, superiors, or gods. The pious soul has internalized obligation. In answering the call, one is true to oneself. As Burke tells us citing Santayana, piety consists in "loyalty to the sources of our being" (Burke 1965, 71). Since these sources are at least in part external to the self, even while formative it, piety proceeds through identification. Piety places difference under erasure. Piety is the virtue of harmonious subjects. Impiety, on the other hand, is piety's active negation, and consists of "ungodliness, unrighteousness, wickedness." Impiety, in its usual usage, is a sin: a refusal not only of duty, but also of God. Piety and impiety are not for as much simple antonyms, but set in play different ontologies. Piety moves toward unity: It seeks wholeness through the denial of difference. The pious soul, filled with grace, is constituted in harmony with itself and with its sources. Impiety begins, on the other hand, with a break, a refusal, a sin, and as such an affirmation of will. Impiety is inaugurated in difference. While piety is fundamentally based in a denial of self through transcendence, impiety begins with an other, or otherness within the self.
There is value in beginning with a thin conception of reconciliation. Otherwise our understanding... more There is value in beginning with a thin conception of reconciliation. Otherwise our understanding of it in political terms is clouded because we will be prone to quickly literalize a metaphor. Our usual context for understanding reconciliation is interpersonal. We imagine a moment of harmony between friends, family members, or co-workers that is disrupted by some injury or misunderstanding that wounds. Reconciliation is then both a process and an outcome where that disruption is overcome, where the wound is acknowledged, and harmony, while not as innocent as before, is restored. That understanding, in a process Kenneth Burke described in the Rhetoric of Religion, is carried into other realms: into the realm of political and social institutions, but also and more fundamentally into the immaterial realm of the theological. Reconciliation is understood as not only between humans, but between body and soul, or between men and women and their god. From there, the meaning of reconciliatio...
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 1991
... Foucault, concerned with accounting for the production of statements and for the character of... more ... Foucault, concerned with accounting for the production of statements and for the character of formations of power, does not seek to judge discourse. ... Foucault's conceptual apparatus offers no horizon against which the power/knowledge dynamic could be considered. ...
Page 1. fm i/ K RHETORIC IN THE FORMATION OF CANADIAN CIVIL CULTURE AND Michael Borland and Mauri... more Page 1. fm i/ K RHETORIC IN THE FORMATION OF CANADIAN CIVIL CULTURE AND Michael Borland and Maurice Charland Page 2. Page 3. LAW, RHETORIC, AND IRONY IN THE FORMATION OF CANADIAN CIVIL CULTURE ...
The liberals may well be godless, but they are not very bothered by justice. The left, on the oth... more The liberals may well be godless, but they are not very bothered by justice. The left, on the other hand, does want justice, but is still extremely pious (Jean-Francois Lyotard
Philosophy & Rhetoric, 2017
Canadian Journal of Communication, 2016
Jazz rhetoric can mean two things. The first is the discourse about jazz, its significance and it... more Jazz rhetoric can mean two things. The first is the discourse about jazz, its significance and its meaning. The second is the music itself as an unfolding form performed to an audience. Both have constitutive political effects that function through pathos prior to a distinction between subject and object. This pathos arises through in-betweenness or interality, and can be described in terms of the middle voice, Dasein, and aesthetic experience. This article develops these concepts through a discussion of the jazz rhetorics of Wynton Marsalis and Amiri Baraka.La rhétorique du jazz englobe deux phénomènes : Les discours sur le jazz, le décrivant, le donnant sens et signification et la musique jazz en tant que telle, qui apparait et se donne forme lors de sa mise en scène devant un auditoire. Ces deux ont des effets constitutifs d’ordre politique à travers un pathos qui précède toute distinction entre objet et sujet. Ce pathos émerge de l’intéral, d’une lacune relationnelle à laquelle ...