Keep Austin Weird: Edbauer and Affective Ecologies

In contrast to Bitzer’s rigid model of a rhetorical situation as a “conglomeration of discrete elements” (8), Edbauer quotes Smith/Lybarger’s notion of rhetoric as a dynamic process, one in which the listener “will have a perception of the rhetor and the message in addition to a perception of the issues.” (8). This means that the exigence, rather than having an independent real existence, is “more like a complex of various audience/speaker perceptions and institutional or material constraints”, which must involve “various mixes of felt interests.” (8). It does not exist “per se”, but rather as an “amalgamation of processes and encounters” (8). Thus, the rhetorical situation is “part of what we might call… an ongoing social flux.” (9). Rhetorical discourse is conceived as an ‘affective ecology’ where discrete places and individuals are subordinated to the interconnectedness and interactions which they produce.  In her example, a bad part of town is not “bad” exactly because of its location, but because of “the affective and embodied experiences that circulate: feelings of fear…” (11).

I can agree with this conception. It seems like an application of Brennan’s idea of emotional permeability to a common conception of rhetorical situation.  A city, like a rhetorical situation, does not exist in a vacuum. It is “an amalgam of processes… a circulation of encounters and actions” (12): an intra-dependent and interdependent ecology.  She posits that “rather than imagining the rhetorical situation in a relatively closed system, this distributed or ecological focus might begin to imagine the situation within an open network” (13).

This model seems more applicable to real rhetorical discourses than does Bitzer’s. Take, for example, his notion of exigence as a real, non-fictitious problem that is independent of any observer. Now think of the recent budget debate. There were those who said we had a spending issue (one exigence), those who said we had a taxing issue (another exigence), and even those who said that a budget deficit was not inherently problematic (thus, there would be no exigence at all).  Naturally, people couldn’t communally conceive of a particular problem. For some, it was the result of careless spending on defense. For others, it was careless spending on our “safety net” of welfare programs. Every conceivable issue became involved, even seemingly minute and unrelated issues such as federal funding for planned-parenthood programs. The exigence was far from an independent and discrete problem, it was framed almost exclusively by constituents’ personal perceptions.  Did we have a spending crisis? A taxing deficiency? You decide.

This example might also be helpful in assessing whether Edbauer’s model of discourse as functioning in an ecology holds water.  Edbauer would hold that the constituents—audience, speaker, exigence, constraints—are not fixed and discrete, but are continually evolving and changing. As the debate over the budget progressed, new audience members were brought into the fray. Eventually, virtually every American was cognizant of an “imminent shutdown,” and further, most of us had our own ideas for how to resolve this. Our president, for better or for worse, felt compelled to chime in, adding another speaker to the mix.  People responded to various utterances by changing their positions, opinions and perceptions .And the final solution was a compromise between conservative and liberal elements, delivering only $38 Billion in spending cuts compared to the conservative demand for $60 Billion in spending cuts, which reflects differences in perceptions of audience members, speakers, and exigencies.  Various “riders” got dropped from the bill, an indication that the common conception of the “problem” (if there ever was any agreement) and the situation’s constraints had changed as time progressed and the level of tension increased.

I also like Edbauer’s conception because it allows me to give some legitimacy to the idea that “what’s for lunch?” could be an exigence, given force merely by my own perceptions and feelings.

In sum, I think Edbauer’s notion of situation as an affective ecology is more aligned with the realities of rhetorical discourse than a “closed system” model of discrete elements like Bitzer’s.  That’s not to say that Bitzer’s model is without purpose—it’s merely a simpler model, one whose use may be less applicable when we need to consider the myriad realities of a system in constant inward and outward flux. As Edbauer put it, “though rhetorical situation models are undeniably helpful for thinking of rhetoric’s contextual character, they fall somewhat short when accounting for the amalgamations and transformations—the spread—of a given rhetoric within its wider ecology.” (20)