Thethresholdoftheself- Bradford Vivian

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The Threshold of the SelfBradford Vivian

The subject has a history. Classical Greek sculpture expressed a fascina-tion with the formal beauty of one's self. Ever gazing outward or upward,the marble figures symbolized the Greek preoccupation with a boldness ofbeing, a constant focus on the ideals of the body and mind, which, throughtheir pursuit, might allow one a foretaste of heaven. Centuries later, as thepagan symbols of the ancient world were replaced with those of the grow-ing Byzantine Em pire, blocks of the same marble w ere fashioned into verydifferent expressions. The ideals of form made manifest in the smooth,taught lines and surfaces of classical Greek sculpture were supplanted byByzantine art's attention to the less perfect details of the individual: dis-tinctive and common faces, beards, clothing, and less glorified bodies. Thegazes of the Byzantine statues were cast down, contemplative, reflectingByzantium's early Christian emphasis upon the modesty of human exist-ence, the pious appraisal of one's time on Earth. Each of these sculpturalstyles is a material w ay of thinking and expressing o ne 's being in the world.In this context, each is also symptomatic of the conditions in which suchbeing was possible.

The subject must not be conceived as a transcendent entity. Quite to thecontrary, there is a historicity to our being and its expression, to our sub-jectivity and its elaboration. Within a more sweeping perspective, our ep-ochal narra tives of the subjectas well as the modes of though t and speechby which we make sense of ourselveschange with each passing age.

At the forefront of the cur ren t era is a manifold effort to rethin k andelaborate anew the concept of the subject. Feminist scholars have initiatedpolitical critique and transformation by arguing that the very notion of asubject in Western discourse has functioned as a trope of masculine privi-lege cloaked in the language of equality and secular hum anism .' Postmo d-ernists , of course, define con temporary subjectivity as de-centered and frag-mented by natu re (e.g., Baudrillard 1994; Latou r 1993; Lyotard 1984). AndPhilosophy and Rhetoric. Vol. 33. No. 4. 2 000. Copyright 2000 The Pennsylvania Su teUniversity, University Park, PA.

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3 0 4 BRAI=CD VIVIANa variety of interdisciplinary studies illuminate the role of modem scienceand technology in not only sustaining our being, but actually constitutingthe human; in short, our daily interdependence and union with artificialbody parts, synthetic products, life-support machines, test-tube reproduc-tion, com puters, and more, characterizes the arrival of what has been called"the posthuman."^ Like ancient marble from a quarry, however, all of thesematerials are sculpted in historically specific ways to simultaneously thinkand express our subjectivity.

What role might rhetoric play in this re-imagining of subjectivity? Mod-em Westem thought has defined the subject according to contentthat is,by the nature of the essence or being the subject is said to possess. Drawnaround this content, the subject com es to appear en closed , perhaps autono-mous, and identical to itself. In this essay, however, I argue that the selfmay be conceived as a form a rhetorical formthat exists on ly in its con -tinual aesthetic creation, in its indefinite becoming. The self is, by thisaccount, isomorphic with the threshold out of w hich it is comp osed. Such aformulation makes the self open to difference, to continual m ovem ent andtransformation, instead of identical to itself.

I aim in this essa y to explore the abstract rhetorical forms and functionsout of which the self is com posed. The distinction here amounts to no longerasking, "What is a subject?" but, "What conditions and forces enable theongoing production of the self?" Commensurate with such a proposal, itwill be essential to ask how this movementthis continual becoming ofthe self is brought about. The answer to this question ultimately will am-plify the role of rhetoric in, not simply expressing, but actually producingconditions of being. In what follo w s, I begin by reviewing the very generalaspects of subjectivity that I wish to call into question. Thereafter, I ex-plore how the subject might be conceived differently. Finally, I discuss themanner in which rhetoric may be said to function in the continual becom-ing of the self.

The influence of poststmcturalist philosophers Gilies Deleuze and FelixGuattari on this essay should not go without mention. The movement oftheir thought is guided by a con cem for the category of the subject, and theways in which even those modes of thought that [vomise enlightenment,reform, or revolution can establish a tyranny over the self. Due to theirperspective as such, Deleuze and Guattari were key figures in the philo-sophical m ovement that broke away from, on the one hand, the prevailingFrench structuralism that found its apotheoses in figures such as JacquesLacan and Louis Althusser and, on the other hand, the Marxist humanismof Jean-Paul Sartre. Because Deleuze and Guattari's thought, like no other


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THE THRESHOLDOTTHE SELF 3 0 5contemporary philosophical corpus, offers such a radical critique of estab-lished conceptions of the subject, their work is essential to much of theanalysis in this essay. Before introducing relevant dimensions of their phi-losophy, however, I will first summarize those aspects of Westem subjec-tivity that serve as a point of departure for the present discuss ion.

Identity and becomingPerhaps the most enduring conception of the subject in modem Westemphilosophy is found in the very conditions that are said to make thoughtpossible. E>escartes's cogito is grounded by an analysis of the principlesthat confirm the truth-value of rational thought (1960). Doubt in D escartes'smethod functions to arrive at the identity of the self: by m oving from doubt-ing to thinking to being, thought negates that which might undermine itscoherency or existence and becomes identical to itself. Consequently, thebeing of the one who thinks also becomes identical to himself or herself,for in order to think, one must be.

The thinking subject acquires several important characteristics as a re-sult of this analysis. First, dependent upon its identity to itself, the subjectis defined by the content or essencethe intrinsic beingof this identity.Drawn around such content, the rational subject resides in a position ofstasis, anchored as it is at the center of knowledge. Finally, the anchoringof the subject as such indicates a clearly defined zone of interiority: thethinking subject seek s only to apprehend and confirm its identity, thus ren-dering it immune to the difference at play outside of itself.

This Cartesian formulation of the subject has, of course, enjoyed a con-siderable influence on the nature of Westem philosophy. My claim here,though, is not so much that the cogito has become a willfully imitated modelof subjectivity, but that those conditions of thought it embodies have beenelemental to the shape and function o f the subject in much of m odem West-em philosophy. Indeed, was this Cartesian attention to consciousness, ra-tionality, and identity not also evident in the episteme of the nineteenthcentury, which, as Michel Foucault (1970, 322-28, 373-86) has observed,discovered a realm of the unconscious and irrational lurking beneath theconditions that made the identity of the subject possible? And wais it notthis same unconscious realm whose secret desires and drives were made tospeak so as to render the irrational wholly inte lligible and therefore identi-cal to the consciou sness of the subject? Even in modem ity's encounter with


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3 0 6 BRADFCD VIVIANthe unseen hands of the unconscious, this encounter was unified by a prin-ciple o f identityby an effort to chase away those un conscious forces thatthreatened to fracture consciousness, which ensured the subject's identityto itself. Even in its ongoing exploration of the unconscious and the irra-tional, therefore, the Western episteme continues to rely upon Cartesianprinciples of the conscious subject identical to itself.

Organized around an effort to preserve the rational, knowing subject atits center. Western thought has functioned to produce attributive or exis-tential judgments, to arrive at objective truth, and to confirm the identityof being. Deleuze, however, argues that this conception of thought andsubjectivityand, hence, much of the function of Western philosophymust be called into question: "(A]ll our thought's modeled . . . on the verb'to be,' IS. Philosophy's weighed down with discussions about attributivejudgments (the sky is blue) and existential judgments (God is) and the pos-sibility or impossibility of reducing one to the other. But they all turn onthe verb 'to be'" (1995, 44). According to Deleuze, then. Western thoughtexists principally to establish the identity of being, to define its content,and to arrest it in the self-sam e space o f an "IS."

In contrast to this "IS," Deleuze summons the operation of an "AND.""A N D is neither one thing nor the other," D eleu ze explains, "it's always inbetween, between two things; it's the borderline, there's always a border, aline of flight or flow" (4 5). This "A N D ," then, is no longer concerned withthe identity or individuality of being, for it is "neither one thing nor theother." Rather, this "AND" marks a multiplicity, a conjunction made ofdifference. In opposition to the stasis of the "IS," D eleuze thus submits themovement of the "AND," exhibited in "a line of flight or flow."This movement finds its most coherent manifestation in the concept ofbecom ing so central not only to D eleu ze's philosophy, but to bis collabora-tive work with Fdlix Guattari as well. For Deleuze and Guattari, becomingis always double and heterogeneous; that is, becom ing is effected by virtueof one 's encounter with difference or an other. The encounter between theseheterogeneous elementsin the space of the "AND"forms a multiplic-ity, for together they comprise an event that is reducible "neither to onething nor the other," but exists only in the m ovem ent o f their con gress. Thenature, duration, or course of this event cannot be predicted, only experi-enced; whereas the Cartesian / remains identical to itself now and through-out future affectations, Deleuze and Guattari's concept of becoming en-sures that the nature of the event created by one's encounter with the newand different cannot be foreseen. Becoming thus represents the opening ofone's self onto the nonpredictability of difference and chance, for it de-


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pends upon the risk of experimentation, and "experimentation," Deleuzeand Guattari write, "is always that which is in the process of com ing aboutthe new, remarkable, and interesting that replace the appearance of truthand are more demanding than it is" (1994, 111).The various elements of any given multiplicity, moreover, draw uponone another and thereby undergo particular transmutations that would nothave been possible without the multiplicitythe irreducible differenceof their alliance. To use one of Deleuze and Guattari 's most often-citedanalogies, the orchid and the wasp form a becoming: their heterogeneousencounter "brings about the deterr i tor ial izat ion of one term and thereterritorialization of the other," which is "neither imitation nor resem-blan ce," but a singular alliance that creates the new and different a m ul-tiplicity (1 98 7,1 0) . The nature of this alliance is, in De leuze and G uatta ri 'sw ords, "a becom ing-wasp of the orchid and a becom ing-orchid of the w asp "(10). Literature is also an important means of becoming for Deleuze andGuattari: "[W]riting is a becoming," they claim, "writing is traversed bystrange becomings that are not becomings-wri ter , but becomings-rat ,becomings-insect, becomings-wolf, etc." (240; see also 1986). Elsewhere,Deleuze himself extends this line of thought, commenting that literature"nnoves in the direction of the ill-formed or the incomplete... . Writing isa question of becoming, always incomplete, always in the midst of beingformed and goes beyo nd the matter of any livable or lived exp erience . It isa process, that is, a passage of life that traverses both the livable and thelived" (19 97 , 1). Ac cording to De leuze and Gu attari, then, the ph enom -enon of becoming produces all beingor what Deleuze, in his work onNietzsche, calls "the being of bec om ing" (1983, 23).

The mode of thought embodied in the concept of becoming bears tre-mendous implications for the present discussion of subjectivity. Already,the characteristics of becoming warrant a radical departure from those ofthe cog ito. In contrast to the latte r's identity to itself, we submit the differ-ence of a multiplicity. In opposition to the stasis of the Cartesian subject asa seat of knowledge, we must assert the movementthe processof be-com ing and the enco unter w ith difference it crea tes. Guattari exp lains tha t,in a discourse attuned to becomings, "[t]he emphasis is no longer placedon Beingas general ontological equivalent, which, in the same way asother equivalents (Capital, Energy, Infonnation, the Signifier) envelops,encloses and desingularises the processit is placed on the manner of be-ing, the machination producing the existent, the generative praxes of het-erogeneity and complexity" (1995, 109). In short, then, the concept of be-com ing prom ises "to decen tre the question of the subject on to the questionof subjectivity" (22), to transform this question from one concerned with


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THE THRESHOLDS THE SELF 3 0 9sal, completely circumscribed human form. Hence, in his discourse, "weare situated totally outside the vision of a Being moving unchanged throughthe universal history of ontological formations" (1995, 27). This is not tosay that Guattari believes there are no forms of interiority at all; in fact,Guattari's project examines how the chaos of different sensations, experi-ences, and expressions becomes ordered out of disorder into novel andunforeseen human forms that are nevertheless open and in constant com-munication or interaction with what comes to be known as the "outside."One might summarize Chaosmosis as an effort to ask: Tiiroughout all thechaos and multiplicity of being, what kinds of machines can we build ofourselves in order to survive that chaos , in order to attain som e form knownas "human"? As Guattari puts the question, "How can we, in this sensorysubmersion in a finite materiality, hold together an embodied composi-tion" (93)?

By virtue of Guattari's analysis, it becomes clear that one's being is awholly aesthetic process that depends neither upon an originary momentnor upon a telos. "One creates new modalities of subjectivity," he writes,"in the same way that an artist creates new forms from the palette" (7).One's being is, therefore, always a becoming, wherein the creative eventof this becoming "is inseparable from the texture of the being brought tolight" (81).

This definition of aesthetics, however, and its relation to subjectivity inthis context must be clearly explained.^ Guattari writes that what he calls"the aesthetic paradigm . . . has become the paradigm for every possibleform of liberation" (1995, 91). In light of the failures of "old scientificparadigms," such as "historical m aterialism or Freudianism," Guattari as-serts that "[i]t has become imperative to recast the axes of values, the fun-damental finalities of human relations and productive activity" (91). Guattaribe lieve s that what he ca lls a "virtual ecolo gy" is the key to this project:

An ecology of the viitual is thus just as pressing as ecologies of the visibleworld. And in this regard, poetry, music, the plastic arts, the cinemapar-ticularly in their performance or performative modalitiesbave an impor-tant role to play, with their specific contribution and as a paradigm of refer-ence in new social and analytic practices. . . . Beyond the relations ofactualised forces, virtual ecology will not simply attempt to preserve theendangered species of cultural life but equally to engender conditions forthe creation and development of unprecedented formations of subjectivitythat have never been seen and never felt. (91)Because the scientific, historically materialist, and Freudian paradigms ofbeing have broken dow n have, in fact, proven oppressiveG uattari of-


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fers the "performative modalities" of aesthetic practices as paradigms bywhich the continual becoming of subjectivity may be cultivated. Far fromseeking to define and preserve what being is, Guattari indicates that aes-thetic practices constitute an ongoing and creative bringing-into-being ofone's self. "All this implies the idea of a necessary creative practice andeven an ontological p ragm atics," Guattari adds. "It is being's new ways ofbeing which create rhythms, forms, colours, and the intensities of dance"(94) . Such a formulation of the aesthetic nature of subjectivity provides anessential linkage toward discovering the rhetorical dimensions of the self,and it is this linkage that I will now explore.

Becoming-EnfoldedIf one's being is an aesthetic process, then rhetoric must be accounted foras an important aesthetic technology within that process. In order to offer afulsome account of this technology, however, it is necessary to discuss themode of thought that engenders the rhetorico-aesthetic composition of theself. In his work on Michel Foucault, Deleuze draws upon Foucault 's re-search concerning the conditions that made possible the ancient Greekthought and care of th e self. Deleuz e indicates that such a mode of thoughtstands in contrast to that of the cogito, which maintains the identity of thethinking subject by its fundamental distinction from the object of thought.Whereas the Cartesian account of thought renders a stark divide betweenthe enclosed thinking subject and the exterior object of thought, Deleuzestates that, to the contrary, the motion of thought creates a fold, an interior-ity; this interiority, however, owes its shape to the animation of the exte-rior. Tho ugh t, therefore, is not the rational product of an enclosed interior:"The o utside is not a fixed limit but a moving m atter animated by peristal-tic mo vem ents, folds and foldings that together make up an inside: they arenot something other than the outside, but precisely the inside of the out-side. ... The inside as an operation of the outside . . . as if the ship were afolding of the sea" (19 88 ,9 6-97 ) .Vis-^-vis his interpretation of Foucault, Deleuze thus identifies a verydifferent space and morphology of thought than the one embodied by theself-same subject of the cogito. The exercise of encountering the outside istherefore an exercise by which one simultaneously h ollows out a space forself-knowledge, self-reflection, and self-mastery. This self-knowledge,however, is not founded upon the identity of the thinkitig subject. ByDeleuze's account, the admonishment to "know thyse l f is actually a com-


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raETHRESHOUJOFTHESELF 311

mand to know one's self in the world, as part of the multiplicity of theworld, since one's self cannot be separated from, but is indeed enfoldedamong, the world. As Deleuze puts it, "[T]he relation to oneself is hom olo-gous to the relation with the outside and the two are in contact" (1988,119). Because one is always already embedded in a mu ltiplicity, then , theefforts by which one comes to know one's self necessarily create a foldingin that multiplicitya folding of the outside that forms a cenain interior-ity, a space in which to know one's self in the context of one's encounterswith the outside. According to Deleuze, "It is as if the relations of the out-side folded back to create a dou bling, allow a relation to oneself to emerg e,and constitute an inside which is hollowed out and develops its own uniquedimension" (100). Simply put, the fold is the self in Deleuze's discourse.

The space and function of the fold are paramount to a conception ofrhetoric as an aesthetic technology of th e self. If the fold is a space whereone comes to know one's self, there must be multiple ways in which thisknowing can occur (109). As we have seen, Guattari demonstrates that be-ing is an ongoing aesthetic phenomenon a becoming. It follows that one'sability to understand and cultivate that aesthetic phenomenon is a productof the ways in which one comes to know one's self. If the self is a creative,aesthetic process, then knowledge of one's self is constituted by the activ-ity of selecting different aesthetic modes of being, different styles of life toinhabit. These styles are constitutive of our being and its expression, ofour selfhood and its elaboration: styles of speech, modes of thought, ges-tures, expressions, movements, corporeal comportment, rhythms, forms,intensitiesall plastic modes of being. But how are these styles adopted?How are these aesthetic modes decided upon?The fold, as a space where knowledge of one's self is cultivated, mustalso be seen as a space where the creation of one's self is conducted. Inso-far as this creation is aesthetic, and depends upon the selection and fash-ioning of certain styles of life, the fold is a space of deliberation, judg-ment, and, above all, persuasion: a space where one persuades one's self*to compose one's self according to a multiplicity of styles, to select par-ticular aesthetic modes of being from an entire field of those available atany given moment. Traditionally, rhetoric has been defined as the facultyby which one looks out of or beyond the self in order to observe the avail-able means of persuasion, which aid the speaking subject in the creation ofan external w ork .' M eans of persuasion, how ever, are also available to one'sself within the fold. The exercise of reflectionas a means of coming toknow o ne 's selfconsists in persuading one's self to adopt particular stylesof life from all those available in any given situation. Indeed, Paul Rabinow


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3 1 2 BRADPCD VIVIANposits that subjectivity, k la Foucault, is "a form-giving practice that oper-ates with and upon heterogeneous parts and forms available at a given pointin history" (199 7, xxxv iii). One's self, then, is a local and ongoing aes&eticformation, continually becoming and coming into being; to die extent thatthe aesthetic nature of this process is produced by persuading one's self toadopt some styles of life over others, then this process is a thoroughly per-suasive phenomenon. The aesthetic composition molded by this continuallyrenewed persuasion might best be described as the rhetorical self.

Within the fold, knowledge of one's self cannot be distinguished fromthe practice or process of one's self. The self cannot be thought outside ofits elaboration, and the elaboration of the self cannot be accomplished with-out reflection upon one's self. The fold is not a theoretical or metaphoricalspace reserved for detached, abstract introspection. Deleuze writes, "[T]herelation to oneself will not remain the withdrawn and reserved zone of thefree man, a zone independent of any 'institutional and social system.' Therelation to oneself will be understood in terms of pow er-relations and rela-tions of knowledge" (1988, 103). Deleuze continues, 'To think means tobe embedded in the present-time stratum that serves as a limit: what can Isee and what can I say today?" (119). In this context, the fold is also aspace devoid of any mind/body dualism, a space where thought isdeterritorialized onto the whole of the self, where thought is expressionand expression thought. One does not think or persuade one's self to adopta particular mode of being outside of existing power relations and rela-tions of know ledge; rather, the movement of thought and self-persuasion isthe very m ovement of experimentation and expression, like the in-betweenimprovisational moment when the jazz soloist swings into a melodic so-journ instead of repeating the familiar refrain once more. Such a move-ment is not first thought and, then, only when it is completely thought,expressed. To the contrary, the improvisation itself is the simultaneousthought of expression and expression of thought. Thought here is thus ren-dered radically exterior, aesthetic, and, above all, rhetorical.

Becoming-RhetoricalImprovisation and invention are the methods of self-persuasion by whichone fashions the ongoing aesthetic com position of the rhetorical self. Somestyles and forms of being available in a given moment appear more attrac-tive, more efficacious; yet movement, differencebecomingare brought


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THE THRESHOLD OF THE SELF 3 1 3about only through one 's alliance with such styles and forms, on ly in on e'sinhabitadon afaad experimentation with such aesthetic materials. There isno self other than its aesthetic materiality, and insofar as the various stylesof this aesthetic existence are brought into being by a process of self-per-suasion, there is no knowledge of or reflection upon the self outside of itsongoing rhetorical creation and transmutation.

But where do diese aesthetic styles of life come from? Of what are thesemodes of being comprised? In order to answer these questions, we mustscrutinize perhaps the most basic capacity of the self: the capacity to say"I." Clearly, the cogito functions to create a thinking subject able to referto itself with certainty: the linguistic / is identical to the one speaking. Bythis account, / confirms the existence of an individual, an identity.

Poststructuralist thought, however, calls this definition of the / into ques-tion. D ele uz e and Guattari, for instance, claim that "there is no subject,only collective assemblages of enunciation" (1987, 130). Put another way,discourse creates subjects by first creating suhj&ct positions from which tospeak. The ability to say "1" thus depends upon an entire "assemblage" ofsubject positions that are the willful creation of no one, but are insteadformed by the complex operations of discour se, or what F oucault ca lls "dis-cursive regimes" (19 72 ). In D eleuze's words, "[S ]tatements refer back toan institutional milieu which is necessary for the formation both of theobjects which arise in such examples of the statement and of the subjectwho speaks from this position (for example the position of the writer insociety, the position o f the doctor in the hospital or at his surgery)" (1 98 8,9). Simply put, the individual / is always already the product of a collec-tivea multiplicitythat endows it with value and meaning. In this way,"I is an other, a multiplicity of others" (Guattari 1995, 83).

The very concept of the individual subject, therefore, is an abstract con-cept, a grammatical category. H ence, the category of the subject is never amarker of innate individuality. It is, instead, a position or location fromwh ich to speak that has been created by the social. A subject is thus, aboveall, a formalization of expression: the doctor is constituted by a form ofexpression distinct from the writer or the orator and has no existence out-side of its production and value within the social. The subject, then, is aform of expression, but a form of expression that relies upon the condi-tions engendered by a particular discursive regime. A subject (the writer insociety, for instance, or the doctor in the hospital) always implies a norma-tive index of subjectivity against which one is measured. The subject istherefore a functional category that can never approach the multiplicity ofthe real, the multiplicity of the becomings involved in the continual ex-


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3 1 4 BRAE=CD VIVIANpression of one's being. In contrast to the subject, the rhetorical self thusappears as a strategic possibility whose movement and difference cannotbe contained by or reduced to a gramm atical category . D eleu ze andGuattari's statement, then, that there is no subject, only collective assem-blages of enunciation, d oes not readily translate into the nonexistence of aself. To the contrary, it is the self that throws the normative dimensions ofthe subject into question. According to Deleuze, "The struggle for a mod-em subjectivity passes through a resistance to the two present forms ofsubjection, the one consisting of individualizing ourselves on the basis ofconstraints of pow er, the other of attracting each individual to a know n andrecognized identity, fixed once and for all. The struggle for subjectivitypresents itself, therefore, as the right to difference, variation and metamor-phosis" (1988, 105-6).

The practice of the self is thus found in the "difference, variation andmetamorphosis" the becom ings effected by one's experimentation w ithexisting subject positions, formalized styles of being. While the subject isa coordinate of the social, this coordinate is not a single, fixed point. It is,rather, a relative center that expands and contracts as a given discursiveregime makes access to this relative center either more or less accessible.A subject position is a permeable space through which one might pass inrelative proximity to the center; occupation of this center, moreover, wouldconstitute the realization of the ideal subject position. Given this descrip-tion, it becomes clear that the self is never reducible to one subject posi-tion. There are, instead, m ultiple and proliferating relative centers, expand-ing and contracting, pocketing and animating the machinery of the social.

The ihetorical self passes between , across, and even through these rela-tive centers, these different modes of being. During its passage, the rhe-torical self draws upon the materials of different subject positions to pro-duce its ongoing aesthetic becom ing. These various subject positions, theseexisting styles of life, thus house the fund of available aesthetic modalitieswith which one may rhetorically compose one's self.

Drawing upon this fund of materials, moreover, requires a certain prag-maticswhat Guattari calls "a creative practice and ontological pragmat-ics" (1995, 94). The process described here is not a practice of intrinsicagency or complete autonomy. R ather, as D eleuze has indicated, the depthsand contours of the fold o w e their morphology to existing power relationsand relations of knowledge. Insofar as one is able to manage the ongoingaesthetic modality of the self, then, one must accept that the materials forits production will always be contingent and imperfect. A pragmatics ofthe available, and not the ideal, is required. Consequently, some aesthetic


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THE THRESHOLD OF THE SELF 315compositions of the selfsom e becomings work better than others: som eare smoother, more consistent, and can be prolonged, whereas others mayoperate clumsily, break down, or must be rethought altogether. The com-position of the rhetorical self, therefore, leads not to guaranteed agency orabsolute sovereignty, for these conditions would merely re-instantiate theCartesian characteristics of the subject from which we departed at the out-set of this essay. Instead, the rhetorical self is a contingent practice of dif-ference and multiplicity wh ose results cannot be predicted, only respondedtoa practice that leads only to more difference and multiplicity. It is thispractice that one might even revel in, for it produces, in Guattari's fancifuldescription, "[a] subjectivity of the outside and of wide-open spaces whichfar from being fearful of finitude the trials of life, suffering, desire anddeathembraces them like a spice essential to the cuisine of life" (89-90) .The pragmatics peculiar to the practice of the rhetorical se lf are thus foundin an affirmation of and attunement to difference and contingencyan artof holding together "an embodied composition" (93), as Guattari wouldhave it.

The rhetorical self, then, is brought into being through the traversal ofexisting subject positions those permeable relative centersby persuad-ing one's self to establish a certain proximity with one style of life, toignore another altogether, or to inhabit several styles at once. In Deleuze'swords, "[T]he self, self-Being, is determined by the process of subjectiva-tion: by the places crossed by the fold" (1988, 114). Via this movement,the rhetorical self emerges as a plastic and contingent constellation: somemay persuade themselves to form a fairly consistent pattern; for some, thelocale may be different with each motion; and others may choose to oscil-late only between a limited number of relative centers. The depths andcontours, the surfaces and textures of the self, however, are brought intobeing only out of the abundance or poverty of materials available at anygiven moment. Persuasion of the self to adopt certain styles of lifetoapproximate an ideal or to avoid the coordinates of a certain subjectivityproduces this plastic and contingent constellation, a thoroughly aestheticwork. The rhetorical self, therefore, is composed of difference, multiplic-ity, and contingency of its passage through the space of the "AND," whereit is "neither one thing nor the other," to use Deleuze's phrase. The aes-thetic morphology of the self is , in other words, homologous with the thresh-old fashioned by its movements.

And yet, one final question remains: How are these styles accessible orevident except by virtue of their form? Without question, such styles can-not be thought or expressed outside of their formal manifestation. On this


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3 1 6 BRADFORD VIVIANpoint, the patently rhetorical quality of the rhetorical self becomes mostexplicit. Forms, like agency, are not possessed. Aesthetic forms do not ex-ist only for the self who encounters them. Rather, forms exist by virtue oftheir production and recognition as such by a collective. In this context,how can such forms their cultivation and their expression be "possessed"by a self? Indeed, these forms come into1>eing only in the encounter be-tween self and collectivity^in the space of the "A N D ." The threshold ho-mologous with the morphology of one's rhetorical self, then, is producedthrough the formal recognition and experience of its aesthetic compositionby the changing m ultiplicity of which it is com prised. Guattari refers to thebreach of this threshold, and the encounter with multiplicity it demands,when he writes that the aesthetic production of the self takes advantage "ofall occasions opening onto the outside world; a processual exploitation ofevent-centered 'singu larities' everything wh ich can contribute to the cre-ation of an authentic relation with the other" (1 99 5, 7) . Consequently, thebecoming of the self is always a production of multiplicity and difference,wherein the folds and movements of the inside and outside are animatedby the same fund of aesthetic forms and materialswhere the inside is afolding of the outside.

And . . .The self has a history, and within its historicity the self cannot be distin-guished from its expressionfrom what it becomes. The human that ch is-els and po lishes a marble block into a given form creates an aesthetic workthat is not "representative" of its self, but is no less a part of its self thanare that human's ow n limb s; this creation this ex tension of one's self intoa series of creative ev ents is the process by which one inhabits a certainstyle of being. One's being is not constituted through the identity of an /.To the contrary, the continual becoming of one's self is cultivated throughthe inhabitation of various aesthetic forms and stylistic modalities that al-low movement in certain directions, at certain speeds. Invariably, the re-sult of this movement is a production of difference. Far from laboring toanchor the existence of being in its identity, then, the self may be com-posed through the movement and multiplicity of its becoming.

Rhetoric is a precious aesthetic technology within this process. In orderto comp ose and cultivate one 's being in the world, one must persuade one'sself to ch oo se and orchestrate certain styles of life from am ong those avail-


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THETlfitESHOLDOFTHESELf 317able into an entire aesthetics of being, a densely textured series ofbecomings. Rhetoric may thus be viewed not only as the rational art ofselecting persua sive proofs to affect an aud ience , but also as a self-persua-sive process by which o ne continually exp eriments w ith or improvises uponexisting styles of life and thereby h olds open the threshold of the rhetoricalself. Along the contours of this threshold, rhetoric itself becomes an art ofliving.Department of Speech Com mun icationThe Pennsylvania State UniversityNotes

1. There are too many good examples of this critique to list here in a comprehensivefashion. For perhaps the most seminal critique of this kind, however, see Fraser's "Rethink-ing the Public Sphere" (19 92); or. for an entire volum e d evoted to such issu es, consult Landes'sfeminism (1998).

2. Fem inist scholars have been influential in this strain of scholarship as we ll. For read-ings that focus upon the intersection of technology and the human (especially with respect toquestions of gender), see Balsamo's Technologies of the Gendered Body (1996) and Haraway'sSimians. Cyborgs, and Wom*n(1991). For a more philosophical inquiry into the category ofthe posthuman, consu lt Fraser's "Foucault's Body Language" (1989 ). H owever, the questionof the posthuman is. in many ways, the legacy of Nietzsche's work, which revolved aroundthe question of what might lie beyond "man"; hence the Nietzschean conce pts of self-over-coming and the superman.

3 . Althoug h I rely upon Guattari's definition of aesth etics here, the topic has re ceivedgrowing aitention within rhetorical studies, albeit in new and varied ways. Recent treati!;eson ae sthetics and rhetoric that bear the m ost family resem blance to the one in this essa y maybe found in W hitson and Poulak os's ai^ument that rhetoric is an artistic enterprise that doesnot merely question, but indeed prefigures, the positivist and seemingly objective conceptsof perspectivism or intersubjectivism (19 93) . as well as Bieseck er's brief but highly sug ges-tive discussion of subjectivity, resistance, and rhetoric in the context of Foucault's notion ofstyle (1992). More generally, though, for an insightful treatment of rhetoric as a practicaland tneaningful art of appearances in the context of classical Greek found ations, see Farrell's"Rhetorical Resemblance" (1986),

4 . The concept of self-persuasion is addressed in a quite different but noteworthy man-ner through Burke's theory of rhetoric and identification. Burke's vision of self-persuasiondepends, of course, on a stroog sense of cognition, and for this reason it does not comedirectly into play here. See Burke's Language as Symbolic Action: "Aristotle's Rhetoriccenters in the speaker's explicit designs with regard to the confronting of an audience. Butthere are also ways in which we spontaneously, intuitively, even unconsciously persuadeourselves. In forming ideas of our personal identity, we spontaneously identify ourselveswith family, nation, political or cultural cause, church, and so on" (1966. 301). See also ARhetoric of Motives: "As for the relation between 'identification' and 'persuasion'; we mightwell keep it in mind that a speaker persuades an audience by the use of stylistic identifica-tions; his act of persuasion may be for the purpose of causing the audience to identify itselfwith the speaker's interests" (1969, 46).

5. Aristotle, of course, defines rhetoric as "tbe faculty of observing in any given casethe available means of p ersuasion" (Rhetoric bk. 1; 1954. p. 3).


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Works citedAiistctle. Rhetoric. New York: Modem Library. 1954.Balsam o. Atine Marie. 1996. reclmologies ofthe Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Wom en. Durham.

NC: Duke UP.Bandhallanl. Jean. 1994. Simulacra and Simuialion. Trans. She ila Faria Glaser. Aon Arbor. MI: Uof Michigan P.Biesecker . Barbara. 19 92. "Michel Foucault and the Question of Rhetoric." Philosophy and Rheto-

ric 25: 351-6*.Burke, Kenneth. 1966. Language as Symbolic Aaion. Berkeley, C A: U of California P.

. 1969. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley. CA: U of California P.Deleuze. Gilles. 1983. Nietzsche an d Philosophy. Tratis. Hugh Tomlitison. New York: Columbia

U P. 1988. Foucault. Trans. Seia Hand. Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota P.. 1995. Negotiations: 1972-1990. Trans. Martin Joughin. New York: Columbia UP.. 1997. "Literature and Life." In Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Stnith andMichael A. Greco, 1-6. Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota P.

Deleuze, Gilles. and F(Jlix Guattari. 1986. Ki^ka: Toward a Minor Literature. Trans. Dana Polan.Minneapolis, M N; U of Minnesota P.

. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massuitii. Min-neapolis, MN: U of M innesota P

. 1994. What is Philosophy? Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell. New York:Columbia UP.

Descartes, R^ne. 1960. Discourse on Method, and Meditations. Trans. Laurence J. Lafleur. NewYork: Liberal Arts P.Farrell, Thomas. 1986. "Rhetorical Resemblance: Paradoxes of a Practical Art." Quarterly JournalofSpeechll: 1-19.

Foucault, Michel. 1970. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York:Vintage.

. \9T2. The Archaeology (^Knowledgeand the Discourse on Language.Trans.A^M.S\Knublic Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually E xistingDemocracy." InHabermas and the Public Sphere, ed . Craig Calhoun, 10912. Cambridge,MA: MIT P.

Guattari, F61ix. 1995. Chaosmosis. Trans. Paul Bains and Julian Pefanis. Bloo mington, IN: IndianaUP.

Haraway. Donna J. 19 91. Simians. Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York:Routledge.

Landes, Joan B., ed. 1998. Feminism: The Public and the Private. New York; Oxfotd UP.Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never B een Modem. Trans. Catherine Porter. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard UP.Lyotard. Jean Fra ofois. 19S4. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Kn owledge. Trans. G eoff

Bennington and Brian M assum i Minneapolis, MN : U of Minnesota P.Rabinow, Paul, ed. 1997. "Introduction." In Ethics: Subjeaivity and T ruth, Essential Works of

Foucault 1954-1984, xi- xli i New Yo ii: New P.Whitson, Steve, and John Poulakos. 1993. "Nietzsche and the Aesthetics of Rhetoric." Quarterly

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